


Everything Good Comes in Twos

by OrchidPeach560 (Miss_Webb)



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst with a Happy Ending, Dreams and Nightmares, Eating Disorders, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, GET IT, Hurt Tony, Hurt Tony Stark, Hurt/Comfort, Killian is a therapist, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Other, Panic Attacks, Skinny Boi Tony, Slow Burn, So does Bruce, Someone feed him, Soul Bond, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates, Steve and Bucky work at a gym, Voices in head, and nick fury, buff boys, hehe, i guess, lol, the(rapist), why does everything I write take forever?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-22
Updated: 2019-05-01
Packaged: 2019-05-10 01:51:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 10
Words: 40,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14727708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_Webb/pseuds/OrchidPeach560
Summary: A soulmate AU, Where Tony was in the car when his parents died. Bucky lost his arm in a horrible accident playing on the train tracks. Steve went through an experimental drug trial that gives him more than he was asking for. All trying to deal and cope with it in their own unhealthy ways.Sounds like the perfect soulbond.





	1. Chapter 1

 The sun sneaking its way through a single crack of the shades landed directly in Tony’s eyes, and as it woke him from his sleep he wondered if it was on purpose. He groans deeply, turning his head away, flipping over, but the pillow is cold on this side, and he grimaces, it’s always so cold. He’s not even tired anymore, so he gets up, checking the clock on his way out of his room. It’s two-thirty in the afternoon, yet it feels much earlier. He should have gone to sleep when Jarvis suggested it. That was what, at three in the morning? Tony isn’t sure. He barely sleeps anymore anyway. All he has are his projects.

When he passes the kitchen, he notices the mail slid through the slot. Was it already Monday? He thought it was Sunday, but there the mail was, proving him wrong.

“J, what day is it?” He asks with a powerful yawn, some of his words slurring as the force makes his eyes water. 

“Tuesday, the thirteenth, Sir.”

“Huh.” So, it wasn’t Monday either. Had he slept for a day straight? He laughs at that thought. Like he’d ever more than a few hours. He’ll get decent sleep when he’s dead. Which is bound to happen soon if he doesn’t eat. “When’s the last time I ate?”

“Thirty-nine hours ago, Sir.”

“So that’s why my head hurts.” He mumbles to himself.

“I believe so, Sir. I suggest eating.”

“Yeah, can you order something? I don’t feel like cooking.” He sighs, dropping his head in his hands on the counter, already feeling winded, just walking from his room to his kitchen. Although in his defense it’s a rather large apartment.

“Where from sir.”

“Somewhere with pizza.”

“Would you like anything special on it?”

“Tell them to throw on everything they got. Except for black olives. Oh, and I want breadsticks.”

“Okay, sir. The order has been made.”

“Good.” He sits back up and flips through the letters, he stops on a tan-yellow card, that’s written and addressed in cursive. Looks like another party invitation. Something for some charity and a good cause and all that jazz. He threw it straight in the trash bin not bothering to open it.

He was so tired of good causes. Where was his good cause? All the money of Stark industries, and here he was, slumming it in some low down barely middle-class part of New York. For the lack of a better word, hiding. All it did was show who his real friends were. Only Pepper and Rhody cared, everyone else just wanted to add more fuel to the fire, and have their latest stock on gossip.

It wasn’t until he was here, truly free of responsibilities and people, did he realize how exhausting it all was. Now all his time went into Stark industries projects. He dares say his company is doing better because he’s actually introducing new ideas, and new items for them to sell and produce.

It was quieter here, in this cramped apartment building. Not really, of course, it was louder, walking down halls you hear arguments, screaming, sex, little kids running amuck. This apartment building was full of life, noise and all. Yet it was quieter than his empty lab. It was the voices, the voices he didn't like that had subsided, the ones of his own making in his head. They still rang from time to time. Came to visit in the ungodly hours of the night. They were sometimes so loud he couldn’t sleep. Louder than the lady downstairs who screams at her children. He prefers the noisy neighbors to the voices in his head. Sometimes he even has Jarvis read him to sleep so he can drown the voices out with noise.

“Any calls from Pepper or Rhody?” He asks, plopping down on the couch with a huff as the air is knocked out of him slightly with the force.

“Yes, one message from Ms. Potts would you like me to play it aloud?”

“Yeah.” Tony didn't know where his phone was, which was often the case, Jarvis often acts as a phone reading the messages and answering calls.

Peppers voice fills the room next.

 _“Hey Tony, I’m walking into the next board meeting now. I got the new prototype just in time. It’s beautiful, the engineers are having a field day. It’d be great for you to come back and prove you are alive yourself, but I’m tempted to just let it go considering you are sending such good work in. I think this break is doing you some real good.”_ She stops walking now, he can tell by the sudden clearness of her voice and a less out of breath sound to it. _“I also miss you. Come back soon okay? I’m going in now. Call me back when you can.”_

Something in her tone just told him, they are back to that dance again. It’s a slow dance they’ve been doing on and off since back when she was nothing more than his new personal assistant. The dance of caring and not caring about each other. Although that's not really it. They both always care about each other one way or another. But they hide it, or something comes up. It’s not the right time, they aren’t emotionally stable, the job must come first. It’s always something. One always shows feelings when the other starts closing them off. It’s a hard dance, remembering the steps is tiring. No matter the excuses, there was always one hard reason why they never got together.

They weren’t soulmates.

Soulmates don’t always meet; people often live whole lives get married to people who aren’t their soulmate. Sometimes soulmates die before they meet, the soulmark fades when that happens. No matter how many times Tony reminded her of that fact, she never let herself give in. How could she? Tony was a rare, special man. One of the first in over a hundred years documented to have not one, but two soulmates. Neither of which were her.

Tony looked down at himself. You couldn’t see it passed his clothes, but on his hip, was one hand impression, and on his shoulders, were two others. They were pitch black perfect impressions as if someone had paint on them and laid their hands on him not moments ago. Not all soulmarks are black. They’re meant to stand out from the skin even in their untouched state. Rhody’s soulmark was as white as baby powder before he’d met his soulmate.

When they’d met and touched, it became a neon orange. Almost glowing against his skin. Tony had wondered what color his soulmarks would turn out to be. Would they be different for the two mates, or would they all share the same color?

It’s a question he never intends to get the answer to. Because he intends to never meet his soulmates.

  _What a waste. All that potential just squandered_.

There goes that voice in his head. One of three. Well, hopefully, it’s just three. It seemed every time a new moon passes there’s something else wrong with Tony. He shakes it off, moving his legs, his body. He needs to tune it out. He needs to work, it helps him ignore it, and when he ignores them, they go away. He stands pacing over to the workbench when there’s a knock at the door. He pauses a moment, paranoia and fear set in. No one should be knocking.

“Who is it, J?” He whispers, wondering if he can pretend like he isn’t home or something. 

“It’s your pizza delivery Sir.”

Tony then sighs relieved, already having forgotten about the pizza, but he still checks the peephole before opening the door.

_

Steve’s in the back, with the punching bags. No one else is in the room, which he prefers when he’s trying to get his workout. Strange for someone who works at the gym and should be used to it by now, but he’s different from the average trainer.

He’s only been in there about ten minutes before his mind starts to stray. He doesn’t even realize it’s happening. One moment he’s counting which hit he’s on and the next he’s wondering if he remembered to send in the light bill. He had it in his hand when he went to make breakfast but he doesn’t actually remember putting it in the mailbox.

There’s one hit, and he hears the chain snap and the gust of air at the bag breaks open simultaneously. It fly’s a few feet before it lands sliding across the floor spilling sand all out onto the floor. He sighs, standing straight. He takes a moment to breathe, breathing is always important. Moving too quickly will only make it happen again.

When his heart steadies, he goes over to the corner and grabs the broom. At this point, he’s not even surprised anymore. This is why he works out alone. He doesn’t need an audience to the freak show that is his life. He also doesn’t want word getting back to Bucky.

Steve already knows what he’s going to say. They’ve had this conversation a million times now. He’s going to tell Steve to take it easy, remember the breathing, and not to stress over a few bags. Thing is, Steve isn’t stressed over a few bags, he’s stressed because one day it might not be a bag that gets sent flying. Actually, there is no one day, it’s already happened.

It’s whenever he’s not thinking, whenever he doesn’t measure the exact amount of force he’s throwing into a single movement. He’s broken countless cups, keyboards, and phones. But he’s not worried about things, he’s worried about people. There was a girl he was sweet on, she used to frequent the gym, and he’d finally asked her on a date. They went to the fair, rode a few rides, got some funnel cake, and he was walking her home that night. The plan was plain and simple, give her a kiss on the cheek and ask if she’d like to go out again sometime.

Only she turned into the kiss and he wasn’t prepared for that. Quickly he recovered and kissed her back, deepening it. Everything was going good, except he was still holding her hand. With them standing face to face now and so close it was in an awkward position, and not thinking, he moved quickly and with a lot more force than he meant to.

He could still remember the feeling of her wrist crack under his fingers. He’d paid her hospital bill and she never came back to the gym.

He hated his strength and everything it robbed him of. Which is something he never thought was possible? When Steve was younger, he was gangly and sick. Lithe, pale, couldn’t take ten steps without reaching for his inhaler. He had every sickness you could think of. The hospital was his second home, but it felt more like his first. He was homeschooled, he had to be, otherwise, he would have been held back several grades, that was if he lived long enough to ever go back. Which at the time, no one thought he would.

Every time he came back to the hospital, a preacher would speak to him. Have him go over a prayer to make sure if he did die in the night, that his soul would be accepted into heaven where he would wait for his soulmate.

Steve would always ask how long he’d have to wait for his soulmate up there, and everyone always gave the same answer.

_“Pray you wait a long time. Pray they are more fortunate than you.”_

Steve looks down at his sweaty palms, both pitch black he’s going to meet his soulmate and touch them with both hands when he meets them, and that scares him every time he thinks about it. He’s too strong. What if he breaks them? What if he clutches them too tightly and… and they explode! It’s clearly not a handshake, no one shakes with two hands and even if they do, he doesn’t. It’s got to be a grab or a push of some sort and he could really hurt his soulmate, or even kill them.

It’s thoughts like that, that leads him to wonder if maybe he should have died as a child. Sometimes he blames Dr. Erskine, maybe that man shouldn’t have tempted fate like this.

Steve met Dr. Erskine when he was in the hospital with a bad case of pneumonia. He was in the hospital looking for patients with weak immune systems for a study he was doing to produce a new drug therapy that could help patients with low immune systems and even potentially AID’s. At first, his mother had said no. That Steve had been through enough and didn’t need to be poked and prodded. But Erskine was a smart man and eventually convinced her it was the only way to save Steve. Which might have actually been true.

Steve to this day doesn’t know what was in those drugs. He knows it was some kind of steroid-based enhancers, meant to strengthen the body, and there were antibiotics in it as well, to prevent and get rid of infections. But there was something else, something they never told him the name of, but it was meant to help the body on a cellular level.

He was in excruciating pain for days after getting the serum. His mother cried every day, sure it might be his last. But one day he woke up, the pain was gone, and for the first time in forever, he felt healthy.

It was slow at first. The changes growing. What he noticed right away was breathing. Like his lungs finally opened and he could breathe. He took deep breathes all day long, and he’d run up and down the stairs in the hospital, giddy, not needing his inhaler once.

 _“Momma momma. Look at me I’m running!”_ He’d yell as if running wasn’t something every kid could do. But she would only smile at him just as brightly as he smiled at her, giving back that same energy because it was a miracle to them.

He enrolled in school later that year. Finally, able to go in public and not worry about catching anything. Not worrying about if he had his inhaler or his back up inhaler. Or his EpiPen. He’d been allergic to gluten before. But now he ate loads of it until his stomach ached, and then all he had to do was wait ten minutes and the ache was gone and he could eat even more.

The strength came about a year later. He was watching some poor kid get bullied and he had enough. At the time he didn’t look how he did now, piled with muscles. He looked lanky, only growing in height at that point. Muscle mass was soon on its way. One kid had shoved him, laughing off his attempted to tell them to back off peacefully. So, he shoved them back. But instead of just falling, the kid cleared a few feet off the ground with the force of it, landing on a row of lockers denting them.

The bullies all ran away in fear, and so did the kid he was trying to help. He only ever got stronger from there on.

Bucky was his only friend. They’d met in the hospital. Bucky had been brought in with a huge commotion, doctors barking orders at nurses for drugs and blood. Which didn’t surprise him considering the amount of blood that had covered everyone surrounding him. Bucky told him the story of what happened later on. He’d been playing on the train tracks with his sister when his foot got caught pushing her off the tracks once they saw the train approaching.

He moved eventually, but just in time to save his head from getting torn to pieces by the train like his arm had.

The doctors had to amputate it. But because of his age and circumstances, he qualified for a new prototype prosthetic a company named Stark Industries had just developed.

Dr. Zola had said the jagged tears and exposed nerves made Bucky’s arm a perfect fit for connecting the wires to the nervous system, giving him full control over the metal arm they’d designed. Bucky still has it to this day.

Bucky, similar to Steve, had his soulmarks on the palms of his hands, and one of his biggest fears is that losing his hand, he may have lost one of his only ways to find his soulmate. The other hand still has a mark on the palm, but Steve knows the fear haunts him every day he goes without meeting his soulmate.

Once Steve gets the sand up he decides to call it a night. His shift was up an hour ago, but he could use the overtime, and he hates leaving Bucky here to man the place by himself. He heads to the locker room after doing a quick survey of the gym and not seeing him anywhere else.

“Hey, Buck.” He says when he enters the room. He sniffs hard once and regrets it as the smell of sweat and other not very nice things fill his nose. Another side effects his smelling is a lot stronger. All of his senses are.

“Hey.” Bucky parrots back in a graveled voice. He sounds tired. But then again Bucky always sounds tired, it’s just sort of his whole thing. Everyone finds Steve sunny and chipper and Bucky doomy and gloomy. 

“I think I’m going to head home. Wanna come with? We could close up.”

“You can’t close a twenty-four-hour gym Stevie, that’s not how it works.”

“We can if no one’s here.” He smiles.

“If someone comes after we closed up, then we’re going to hear about it from Fury for the rest of our lives.”

“I admit it’d be hell for a while. But rest of our lives is a little much don’t you think. Not even Nick could hold a grudge for that long.”

“He’s still mad at Sharon for accidentally ordering eight thousand limes”

“Well, it was a lot of money, and who accidentally orders eight-thousand limes? How do you accidentally type eight thousand and not check the price before you hit order? She deserves it.”

“Well it was two years ago, and an accident. He’s going to kill us for purposely closing.”

“Fine. Whatever. Stay here and waste away, I’m going home to shower somewhere with decent water pressure, and where the floors aren’t so damn slippery.”

“So, you’re not heading home then?” Bucky chuckles, Steve laughs along too.

“I meant better water pressure, and less slippery.”

“Attaboy.” Bucky claps, standing up. “I’m gonna go, man, the desk since you’re leaving. Don’t eat my pie. I know exactly how much is left, and if you so much as eat a crumb I’m taking it out of your ass.”

“Well, that’s how things naturally go once you digest.”

“I will cut you if you eat my pie, Rogers!” He calls as Steve leaves the gym.

_

Tony had been working on a new design for hours, the pizza and breadsticks long gone. His back is sore as he sits up, eyes burning a little at the lack of light in the room.

“J, what time is it?”

“One in the morning, Sir.”

“Oh god, it’s been so long.” He groans stretching out. His whole body feels stiff and sore. But that’s nothing new. He’s always got aches in pains. His skin is pale and weak from lack of sunlight, he rarely ever leaves his apartment, and when he does it’s always at night.

He doesn’t eat regularly, and when he does it isn’t anything healthy. Jarvis often reminds Tony he’s lacking in much-needed vitamin’s which is leading to the aches and pains.

“I believe getting out of the apartment would do you good. Movement will help with your stiffness and stimulate muscle growth and blood flow.”

“I can’t just wander aimlessly around this time of night. I’ll be seen, or get mugged.” Tony isn’t sure which he’d prefer more. Actually, he does know, he’d rather get mugged than be recognized and found. Mugging is way better.

“I do believe you own a gym membership, there is one, two blocks from here. Open twenty-four hours. I believe you’ll be safe there. No one is looking for Tony Stark at his hour.”

“Someone is always looking for Tony Stark.” He grumbles back but walks to his room to change. He grabs a new pair of sweatpants and a sweater to help cover his arms. The clothes are baggy on him. He bought them a size bigger when he was a normal weight he doesn’t like clothes that cling. But now that he’s lost weight it’s no longer about comfort, but about hiding just how unhealthy he looks. How unhealthy he is.

 “Okay, where’s my phone?”

“It’s between the couch seats, it’s also dead.”

“That’s okay.” He says, running his hands between the couch cushions until he finds it. “I’ve got a portable charger around here somewhere.”

“Yes, it’s on your bedside table.”

“What would I do without you?” Tony asks, going into his room and grabbing it. Sliding it onto his phone and watches the battery begin to charge.

“I truly don’t know, Sir.”

“You and me both.” Tony chuckles, sliding his shoes on. “Okay, I’ll be back soon.”

“Be safe, Sir.”

“I will.” He promises, a small smile on his face.

-

It’s barely a five-minute walk to the gym, which Tony is grateful for because he’s already feeling winded by the time he steps through the automatic doors. 

“Hey.” Grunts a man at the front counter, rubbing his left arm absentmindedly.

He places his gym card on the counter, pretending to search for something in his pockets. It’s much easier than explaining that he doesn’t like being handed things. He also doesn’t like being touched, but the two are for different reasons. The man takes it and runs it under the keycard reader.

“You’re good to go.” He says, holding it out.

“Thanks,” Tony says, still digging his hands into his pockets until the man eventually sets the card down on the table. Tony takes it and heads to the back by the weights. As he walks back, he notices the lack of other people. Not many people are working out at one a.m. on a Tuesday, but no one? That just seems eerie.

It makes him almost not want to stay. He’s all for the lack of people, but now he realizes how much he stands out in an empty room. He doesn’t like standing out. Not anymore.

He sits on the bench and eyes the weights and silently wishes Rhody were there. They were gym buddies. Tony’s never been the pinnacle of health, nor was he conscious about his body. But it was their thing. Go to the gym, work up a sweat go home and eat junk food.

Now he was pale, sickly, and alone.

“You okay?”

Tony only flinches at the sudden figure standing in front of him. Once he looks up and realizes it’s the guy at the counter, he breathes relieved. “Uh, yeah, I’m good.” He nods quickly, looking down to the ground.

“You’ve been sitting there a few minutes, staring off into space.”

“Yeah, I do that.” Tony shrugs.

The man looks like he doesn’t believe Tony, which he should because Tony stares off into space all the time. Usually, Jarvis is the one to pull him out of his mind when he’s done it for a long time.

“Want me to spot you?” The man asks, gesturing to the bench press. Tony shakes his head, stopping himself from letting out a cheap laugh. As if he would even entertain the idea of doing the bench-press in his state, he’d only drop it back on himself and probably die. At least for anything over twenty pounds. And even that Tony’s not sure of. He hasn’t tested his strength any more than what’s needed to hold his work while making new designs all day.

“I was just going to use the dumbbells.”

“Okay. I’ll be here if you change your mind.” He picks up a spray bottle from the ground and begins wiping down some of the equipment around the room.

Tony ignores the man from there on and does some lifts, making sure to actually work up a sweat, it’s been a while since he did anything beneficial for his heath. While it may not be cardio which would be best for him, it’s something.

His cardio would be walking back, even if it is such a short distance. At the moment it’s all he can handle. He’s barely handling his third rep of twenty with the dumbbells, but he keeps going because he doesn’t want to look weak in front of the freaking bodybuilder who keeps cleaning the machines around him, circling like a vulture.

Tony knows the guy is just doing his job. But he wishes the guy would do it somewhere else, and not in the direct vicinity. About ten more lifts and Tony was sure the shaking in his arms meant they were done for the day whether he wanted them to or not. Almost relieved his body made the choice for him, Tony stood too fast and his balance faltered. That happened a lot lately, especially when he hadn’t eaten in a while. Only this time there wasn’t a couch or desk chair to catch him. Only weights and hardwood floors. He was damn lucky the guy was cleaning the bench nearby and had reflexes faster than one would think humanly possible. He catches Tony just barely by the waste with a strong grip, stopping him from falling completely.

It’s been a few months since Tony has touched or been touched by another person, which is why he assumes the tingling and sharp wave of cold on his hip is probably due to unfamiliar touch, but that doesn’t work the same for Bucky.

He touches people all the time. It’s partly his job and also partly because he’s a hands-on person, tactile, and touching is how you meet your soulmate, so a lot of people are like him. When he feels the tingle in his palm spread out and then a shock of cold as if he’s dipped his hand in ice cold water, he immediately knows it for what it is.

When he stills the man in front of him, he pulls his flesh palm up and gasps. The black soulmark that once covered his hand is now a deep blood red. He gasps. Surprise taking over, freezing him in place.

Tony looks at the man’s hands, and his eyes go wide at the change in color. He lifts his shirt and examines his hip. Sure enough, the handprint on his hip had turned a dark red too.

“You’re my soulmate.” Bucky whispers. Tony looks up at the man. His heart rabbiting, and panic fills his chest. Oh god, he’s going to have a panic attack right here. He doesn’t want that, he want’s anything but that. So, he does what he’s been doing for the last six months of his life.

He runs away.


	2. Chapter 2

As soon as Steve gets home he showers. He’s got to be careful with the handle because one too many times of rough handling on his part, it’s now connected with six layers of duct tape, and wobbles whenever the water is running. He only every uses hot water, he hates the cold.

When he gets out, he drops down heavily on his bed, sighing relieved. Tomorrow was his day off, just making going to sleep all that better. Knowing he could sleep in put him at ease.

The front door slamming hours later, however, does not put him at ease. His head shoots up on instinct, even if his eyes are closed, he’s very alert. Bucky doesn’t normally slam the door, ever, because he knows how sensitive Steve’s hearing is. So he has to listen out and make sure they aren’t getting robbed- again. He stopped it the first time easily, and it hasn’t happened again. In fact, the entire building was a lot safer ever since Steve and Bucky moved in. Everyone’s been tiptoeing around on their floor since Bucky cursed out the neighbors down the hall when they decided to play music loudly at three a.m. Apparently, everyone had heard and got the message to keep it quiet when the sun went down.

So the slamming was unusual. When he heard the hard stomps towards his room, he recognizes it as Bucky’s stride. Even fast passed as he is, the way he walks is recognizable. Even at a distance.

“Stevie! Steve!” Bucky calls, pushing his door open and walking over to the bed. Steve groans and sits up. He knows there’s not a fire, and it’s not fear in Bucky’s voice. It’s more like excitement.

“Wha- what is it, Buck?”

“Steve I found my soulmate!” Bucky exclaims, shoving his hand in Steve’s face. Steve blinks a few times.

“All I see is red Buck.” He squints, and as he leans back he realizes what he’s looking at. “Oh my god! Your soulmark! It’s red!”

“Yeah!” Bucky smiles. “I met my soulmate!” He yells as if it’s just hitting him all over again.

“Who is it? Where are they? What happened? Where’s their mark? I told you this would happen, didn’t I?” Steve talks a mile a minute, almost just as excited for Bucky as he was for himself. After all, this had been a journey they’d taken together. Ever since ninth grade, just after Bucky lost his arm, and he was depressed, losing a limb and possibly the one chance to find his soulmate.

Steve had been adamant, determined that if against all odds he managed to survive and live another day passed all those illnesses, that Bucky would find his soulmate with just the one arm. For the last twelve years, he’s done his best to tell him that every day, and now right here, in front of his eyes he see’s Bucky actually did meet his soulmate, it just gives him a swell of pride in his chest. He was right, there is hope in the world, all you have to do is believe.

“Geeze one question at a time.” Bucky laughs. "I don’t know his name, but he came into the gym, and he started working out, and he stood up, and I guess the blood rushed to his head or somethin’, because he started to fall, and when I caught him… I could feel it, Stevie, just like they tell you in school. Like ice or a wave of freezing wind, just like a blanket being pulled off you on a cold day except just in my hand. When I looked it was red, and his was too.”

“Where is he?” Steve asks, and Bucky sighs, deflating a little.

“He looked down at his soulmark and… and then he just ran away from me.”

“He did what!? Why?”

Bucky shrugs. “I dunno. Maybe it was the shock. That happens sometimes right? You get nervous and don’t know what to do?”

“I suppose. But how are you supposed to find him now? How is he going to find you once he calms down?”

Bucky looks a bit guilty at those words.

“What’d you do, Buck?” Steve asks a little warily. Knowing Bucky’s desperation to have and find his soulmate could have led him to make some very bad decisions. Especially if the guy suddenly ran away in the middle of the night without so much as a word or exchange of names and numbers. He’s mentally wondering how much trouble you can get in for temporarily kidnapping your soulmate. There might be some kind of leeway, like soulbond drunkness, or some form of impatience and desperation. Maybe if they let him go right now it won’t count.

“I didn’t do nothin’ bad.” Bucky bristles, visibly affronted at Steve’s implications. “I was worried he might be hurt or somethin’ because he’d just fell, and then ran like a bat outta hell. So, I followed him.”

“You followed him out of the gym?”

“Yeah… and down the street… and around the corner… and up to the tenth floor of his apartment building.”

“Buck!” Steve laughed. “You followed him all the way home?”

“Yeah? Is that bad? If I hadn’t I might’ve never seen him again.”

“If someone runs from you, that usually means they want to be away from you. Following him was the worst case if he was panicking. Sometimes people need a moment alone to think before coming back to a situation. He probably thinks you’re stalking him, or weird.”

“No, he didn’t see me,” Bucky assures. “I thought about knocking on the door but I thought that might be too much. So I went back to the gym and waited for Sharon to take her shift, and I came here.”

Steve nods, thinking it over. He’s never actually heard of anyone running form their soulmate the moment they met. It’s usually the opposite. Like immediate declarations of love, or some sudden and loud PDA. Some sit down and get to know each other. There are times when people have not been in a good place in their day or life in general and just exchanged contact information.

Running away? No, that was new.

“So, what are you going to do? Wait for him to show back up at the gym?”

“No.” Bucky shakes his head. “From the way he looked, I’m sure he’s never gonna come back. We have to go to him.”

“I’m sorry- we?”

“Yeah. I was thinkin’ maybe you could go an’ knock on his door. Talk me up to him.”

“You want me to go to your soulmate's apartment and... ask him out for you?”

“Pretty much, or you could just give him my number and tell him how amazing I am.”

“No!” Steve stood from his bed. “Are you crazy? He’s your soulmate. If you think it’s going to be weird that you followed him to his apartment, it’s only going to double when he realizes you sent me instead of coming yourself.”

“Come on Steve! I know it’s weird, but I dunno what to do!” Bucky sighs dropping onto his bed, and it squeaks with the weight and force of him. “I’m not good with people, you know that! They take one look at me, _The Metal Armed Freak,_ and they get scared! They run away.”

Steve sits back down, understanding Bucky’s reluctance. Yeah, there are a lot of benefits to being over six feet tall and two hundred-fifty pounds of pure muscle- and machine in Bucky’s case. For instance, people won’t break into your house, or play music once the sun goes down. Then there are the pranks when no matter what crazy diets Steve and Bucky lie and say they are on to mess with people, they believe them. There are people who find them insanely hot, they get random love letters and teenage girls follow them around the gym sometimes ‘oohing and ahhing’.

But when it comes to settling down with someone you know. Or even just trusting yourself around others it’s hard. Steve literally breaks almost everything he touches and Bucky… he gets the pains. 

Phantom limb pains mixed with real pain from the metal arm clutching at the swollen skin of his shoulder. Some days the arm doesn’t work right. When he’s in that pain, he can barely lift the arm because it hurts so bad. He gets grouchy, and his glare has literally made children cry before. Kids in school used to call him that. “The metal armed freak.” Just liked they called Steve a freak too for his strength. Although they stopped saying it to their face once they both grew into their strengths and bodies.

But that’s the problem, isn’t it? Instead of being bullied, everyone was scared of them. Too scared to get close, too scared to talk to, too scared to be friends and start relationships. They’d both missed out on a normal childhood, and high school experience.

They only had each other, and for years that’s been enough, it’s always been enough. Just having one person who understands, just one person to share the burdens with. It meant the world to the both of them.

The only problem was that they didn’t have each other by choice. It was them, or no one, and that’s not how it should be. They both had soulmates and the concept scared them both. That was because Bucky thought he’d never meet his, and Steve was scared that he would. That he’d touch them and they’d shatter like glass in his hands.

That kind of fear isn’t something Steve’s ever wanted to share with anyone.

“Do you think that’s why he ran?” Steve questioned quietly. 

“No.” Bucky sighs into the mattress. “I had my glove on, and the long sleeve shirt. He didn’t see it.”

Steve breathes a sigh of relief and looks up at the ceiling. “Okay. I’ll go.” Bucky pushes himself face up and stares at Steve.

“Really? What are you goin’ to say?”

Steve shrugs. “I don’t know. That my best friend in the world is a huge punk and is too nervous to come over and talk to his own soulmate so he sent me.” Steve smiles. “Then I’ll probably tell him how you hog the pie when your sister makes us some. I’ll also mention that when you find a new movie you like you to watch it over and over again until you’re either sick of it, or you know it by heart.” Bucky laughs at that because it’s true. “Maybe I’ll tell him how you like to think you can cook, but if I wasn’t a science experiment as I child, I probably would have died of salmonella poisoning years ago.”

“I’m not that bad!” Bucky protests. Steve doesn’t agree but he stops with the teasing.

“I’ll tell him about how you’ve been waiting your entire life to meet him, and I know you’ll be the best soulmate anyone could have. You know, besides my soulmate.” Steve smiles.

“There’s no way your soulmate is better than my soulmate.” Bucky declares.

“Hey, don’t talk about my soulmate like that Barns, or I’ll have to kick your ass,” Steve says shoving Bucky to the side. 

“You haven’t even met them yet!”

“Doesn’t matter, I’ll defend their honor with everything I have.” He swore.

“Fine.” Bucky sighs. “Let's just say we have equally awesome soulmates.”

“Deal.” Steve smiles and lies back in the bed.

“Uh, what are you doing?”

“Going to sleep?”

“No, you have to go to the apartment!”

“What!? Right now? It’s six in the morning!”

“Yeah, so? Let’s go, chop chop, Rogers.”

“I hate you.” He groans and gets up. This is going to be awkward as hell.

_

Tony full out sprints all the way to his apartment and slams the door shut behind him. Locking all three locks on the door, and telling Jarvis to keep an eye out for intruders, or anyone unusual on the entire floor. Which would be anyone other than the mailman, because no one else lives on this floor other than Tony. When he bought the apartment, he bought the entire floor and did renovations. So, three of the four apartments on this floor now make up one, and the fourth he uses as a storage unit. There is still the elevator and the hallway. Tony hates the idea of an elevator that opened into his living room. He had too many trust issues for that. Besides, having to install a key or code so that only he could access the floor felt like it’d draw more attention to him, and more attention is the opposite of what Tony wanted.

Tony slides down to the floor and struggles to catch his breath. His legs are screaming at him in pain and his arms are sore. He really shouldn’t have gone to the gym, it was such a bad idea, who was he kidding. He’s seriously underweight, starving himself accidentally every other day. He can barely keep his head on straight or his breath walking, he should have never been in that gym. All that and now he’s got this soulmate to worry about.

Oh god, all he did was run. He just freaking ran from his soulmate!

_Oh please, the best thing you could have done for that man is run away. Who would want you for a soulmate?_

Tony clutches his hands to his ears and he stands up, moving. Moving helps stop the voices sometimes. Only his legs hurt, and he’s well beyond exhausted. So pacing’s not an option. He crosses the living room, to the bathroom and he shut the door behind him turning the faucet on and leans heavily on the seat. Noise helps drown them out.

He looks up at himself in the mirror. He doesn’t do that anymore. Look at his reflection. It’s partly because he doesn’t want to see what he’s become. What he’s lost. He’s pale, and the bags under his eyes are dark. Just looking at his face you can tell he’s lost a lot of weight. He hates it.

He pulls his shirt over his head and drops it to the floor. You could just barely see the faint outlines of his ribcage if he moves they only gain a better impression on his skin. His arms are so thin, they look like they could snap like twigs. His hips are bony and curved just over the bone.

He runs his hands over the thin flesh and stops just above his soulmark.

The red soulmark.

He hadn’t imagined red. He imagined orange like Rhody’s. Or green like his parents. He’d once seen a pink too. He likes the red. It’s dark, like crimson, or blood, it’s better than some of the neon-like colors out there. It’s simple, Tony likes simple. 

He thinks back to the man- his soulmate. God Tony doesn’t even know his name. He barely knows what the man looks like. Tony hardly ever makes eye contact with people. He always keeps his head down to avoid being recognized. Not that it’s such a difficult task. He’s lost fifty-pounds since he was last seen in public, and he shaves instead of taking the time to shape his goatee. It makes him look like a completely different person.

He looks back up at his face in the reflection. Knowing who he looks more like when he shaves. The other reason Tony doesn’t like to look in the mirror.

He looks just like Howard.

_Ha! A sad pathetic version. You aren’t even worthy enough to walk in my shadow much less carry the Stark name. Starks are made of Iron, we don’t bend, and we don’t break. How many times do I have to tell you that before you stop embarrassing me?_

Tony shoves the faucet off and throws his shirt back on. If noise wasn’t drowning out the voices then he needed to work. He reaches the workbench and clears off the table reaching for the new designs he’d sketched earlier.

“Sir, you haven’t eaten in thirteen hours, you’ve also stressed your body physically in ways you haven’t in months, I suggest you eat and rest.”

Tony touches the hard of his palm to his forehead, feeling a migraine coming on. “I-I can’t. I need to work.”

“Sir, your health may be in jeopardy, I am unsure of what emotional trauma you may have ex-”

“Mute!” Tony yells.

He hasn’t muted Jarvis once since he moved out here. But he can’t handle the lecturing right now. Work is all he needs, it’s all he has. But he can’t see, as he looks down at the pages, as his vision blurs with tears. His hands are shaking too. God. Why did this have to happen today? Why did this have to happen at all?

He didn’t want this. Any of it.

He drops his head into his hands and leans on the workbench. Taking deep breaths. If he starts crying now, it’ll take hours to stop. He needs to work, not cry. He wipes a tear from his cheek roughly and takes stuttering breaths as he forces himself to sit back up.

“Bring up the lights to one-hundred percent,” Tony ordered. The lights came up, but the ‘Yes, sir’ response never came. Tony already regretted muting Jarvis. But if he undid it, then he’d only go on about health and emotional trauma.

Tony’s tired of talking about his emotional trauma. He plugs the soldering iron in and begins grabbing everything else he needs.

_

Steve quickly gets dressed and waits as Bucky changes his clothes. Three times.

“Buck, you look great, come on let’s go.”

“You’re just saying that,” Bucky yells back out from his closet. “I can’t find my glove.”

“It’s right here,” Steve says, picking it up from the table.

“No, my good one, without any holes in it.”

“Oh.” Steve hasn’t seen that glove in a while. It’s black, with leather-like material covering it. Bucky’s arm has these panels that help it gain movement and shift. Sometimes in the hand, because it’s got so many tiny panels, it catches on fabric and tears it. So when he goes somewhere fancy or just wants to look nice, he uses the leather one. “I thought you weren’t coming up with me?”

“I’m not.” Bucky agrees, “But what if he wants me to come up? Or if he comes down to meet me?”

Steve pushes off the wall and walks into the room. “You don’t need to hide your arm from him Bucky. He’s your soulmate. If there is anyone in the world who wouldn’t be scared or freaked out by it, it’ll be him.”  

“You don’t know that.” Bucky steps out of the closet. Holding the glove. “It’s weird, and… it gets cold, it’s heavy, the skin around it bleeds and gets infected sometimes, and my temper when it hurts… it would make anyone go running. He’s already run from me once. I don’t want him to again.”

“He’s going to see it eventually Buck. Do you plan to never take the glove off? Or your shirt? Never let him touch you? Hiding it will only delay whatever reaction he’s going to have.”

“Well excuse me if I’d like to know his name first. Or to at least try and get to know him.”

“I’m just saying, let’s not worry.” Steve clarified.

“Fine whatever, let’s go.” Bucky huffs.

Steve smiles. Bucky doesn’t do nervous well. He’s sort of an all or nothing guy. He’s either angry or happy. He either knows what he’s doing or has no clue. Wanting to do something, but being afraid to do it isn’t something Bucky’s probably ever felt.

He’s a go-getter. Not that he isn’t self-conscious, or never has doubts. But usually, his want overpowers that. He lives in the moment. Hardly ever truly thinks ahead. It’s one of the reasons he gets into trouble so often. His issue is he doesn’t think, and it’s hard to be nervous when you’re not actually thinking about something and all the ways it can go wrong.

But now he’s thinking about them. Every single scenario that could have caused his soulmate to run away at the gym. Every reason why his soulmate could run away again.

This is important, it’s the one thing that Bucky has been thinking about ever since he was old enough to know about soulmates. The idea that someone out there is destined to love you, to fit you perfectly in every way.

That’s the fairytale version that kids have. 

As you get older and see a few soulmate bonds in action you realize it’s not as magical as you think. There aren’t sparkles. There aren’t explosions going off when you finally touch. Things aren’t easy.

But there’s this connection. Once you find your grove, you become one almost. Like having a million inside jokes. Knowing each other’s cues, and knowing how they’re feeling by just taking one look at them. There’s a harmony, a pattern, that just locks everything into place. That’s when it all feels like magic. That’s when you begin to finish each other’s sentences, that’s when you are able to just know how your soulmate is feeling, even at a distance, that’s how you can tell what they need without them ever needing to say it aloud.

It’s how they know you, and understand what you need. Bucky wants that, he wants his soulmate, he always has. He’s romanticized it, imagined it, thousands of ways, each and every one of them special and amazing.

So, no, the running away wasn’t expected, but catching some guy about to brain himself on the bench press also wasn’t what he imagined either. Life isn’t perfect, no one needs to tell Bucky that, every twinge of pain in his metal arm tells him that. Now all he wants is a do-over, a second chance, and he’s going to fucking look good, so Steve can shove it with his advice of not worrying or caring.

This is singlehandedly the most important thing to Bucky in the world and he’s going to do whatever he can not to mess it up.

_

Tony jerks violently when he’s awoken by a knock at the door. No one is supposed to be knocking at the door. The mailman never knocks, and he didn’t order any food.

He falls back onto the floor, knocking a few things on his desk over. Oil spills over the circuit board and the desk creating a huge mess. He sighs looking at it spread. Then a second knock comes and he flinches again.

“Who is it?” He mumbles, voice rough from dryness. He’d drooled all over his sleeve and now his throat is sore. Not to mention the crick in his neck from the crouched position he was sitting in.

When the answer doesn’t come he looks up to the ceiling. “Jarvis?” He asks, and almost immediately he remembers muting him. That’s why he didn’t get a warning about the door.

He stands from the floor carefully, moving slow, because of his headache and soreness, but also because he’s worried. Who knows he’s here? There’s no way Pepper or Rhody found his location, even if they did they’ve been respecting his silence, his distance. Even if they don’t know why they understand the need to get away from it all sometimes.

He couldn’t have been recognized. He barely leaves, only for shopping, only at night, and he keeps his head down.

No one can know.

_He_ can’t know.

He takes some quiet deep breathes, steady’s himself on his feet and tiptoes forward. To the door, pressing his cheek on the smooth sanded wood, and looks through the hole. It’s a tall blond man. No one Tony recognizes. It’s possible it’s a private detective or mercenary of some sort.

Tony rolls his eyes at himself. Mercenaries? That’s a bit extreme. Even for Killian. Tony takes another breath, and slowly unlocks the door. Three clicks and they all feel like a mistake. Slowly he pulls it open. Just a crack, regretting not getting that chain lock. Then again, he never intended on opening the door for strangers. First thing first after this, he’s getting that chain lock. 

It’s opened barely wider than the span of an inch. Just enough for Tony to see this guy is freaking built like a tall building. Mercenary doesn’t seem too far off from the size of the guy's arms.

“Hello?” Tony asks, voice still sounding rough. The man smiles big and bright, all white teeth that practically shine like Mr. Clean. 

“Hi, uh… this is going to sound really weird. But my name is Steve, and I work at the gym, not far from here.” Steve hesitates, this is really awkward. “A friend of mine was working last night, and he’s your soulmate.”

Tony blinks owlishly. It makes sense with the bodybuilder vibe. But how did he know to come here?

“Y-your friend?” Tony eventually brings himself to ask.

“Yeah.” The man-Steve, nods. “He’s about an inch or two shorter than me. Black hair to his shoulders, grey-blue eyes, red soulmark on his hand. He said yours was down on your hip I think?”

“Uh… yeah.” Tony nods. Opening the door just an inch more. Somehow Steve’s smile grows brighter.

“Great! He was just nervous because you left very quickly. So he sent me up. I was wondering if maybe you’d be willing to come down and speak to him? Or have him come up? You know, just to properly meet?”

Tony inhales sharply, looking to the ground. Trying to think of an answer, because he’s at a loss for words. Although Steve’s gaze jerks up.

“Fire!” Steve yells, and a split second later there are three large pops in quick succession. Tony turns eyes wide, the oil made it to the soldering iron and boom. Fire spread out on his desk large sparks and mini-explosions going off. Tony’s got too many accelerants and fire hazards in his apartment. It’s spreading too fast. There’s another spark, and a few pieces of metal fly off in Tony’s direction, and next thing he knows is a heavy force on his shoulders knocking him down out of the way.

“Jarvis, fire extinguisher please!” Tony yells once he gets the air back in him. Immediately the connected hoses in the ceilings placed over the workbench go off spraying foam on the entire area down in a matter of seconds. The smell of smoke and fire left in the air, Tony pulls away from the man seated on the ground next to him. There’s metal sticking into his door and wall. He definitely would have been hit in the chest or arm had he not been pushed out of the way.  

As much as he doesn’t like being touched or talking to strangers. He prefers it to having to give himself stitches again, that was just way too painful, he’d rather scar and have to go through a slow healing process.

He turns to the man, about to thank him, for his quick thinking, but he stops short when he finds the man looking down at his palms incredulously.

“What is it?” Tony asks worried Steve might have injured himself in his haste to help Tony. God, why was he always getting in the way and hurting people?

Steve tilts his palms up so Tony can see, and instead of pitch black matching soulmarks on Steve’s hands, is a royal blue, and Tony realizes he’s ignored the feeling of cold once again.

“Y-you’re my soulmate.” Steve lets out. His voice breathless and confused. As anyone would be in this situation. But what can’t be heard in his voice is the immense relief he feels. He’s met his soulmate… and he didn’t hurt them… he saved them from pain actually. This was… this was amazing.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys, I really wanted to get to everyone meeting and talking and angst, so they can begun to build a relationship in the next chapter. But my uncle just died, and i was having a really hard time finding motivation to write that scene, which suck because writing usually makes me feel better. Either way, just know, it's coming in the next chapter I promise. 
> 
> Thanks everyone for commenting and being patient it keeps me motivated. Updates will be very slow for the next week or two. I'm sorry.

Bucky is pacing back and forth outside the apartment building. It’s hot out and his flesh hand is getting sweaty, and he wipes the palm against his pants. He knows Steve won’t say anything bad about him, but somehow, he’s still worried something’s going to go wrong.

He’s not sure how long it’s been when Steve finally comes down, but it felt like too long. He’s just about to breathe a sigh of relief when it gets caught in his throat at the look on Steve’s face.

“What’s wrong?” He asks.

Steve takes a deep breath looking conflicted as he stops just in front of Bucky. “I’m not sure anything would qualify as wrong, per say. I just feel, kind of conflicted.”

“Conflicted about what?”

“Well, I have big news. Confusing news. First off, your soulmate’s name is Tony.” Steve can’t help but smile when he sees the look on Bucky’s face at the words. So much for the grouchy Bucky. You’d think he was sunny one by the amount of teeth that came into view with the smile carved in on his face. 

“Tony.” Bucky whispers to himself. As if saying the name might summon the man himself out of thin air.

 “Yep, and my soulmate’s name is also Tony.” Steve adds on after a beat, and now Bucky looks confused. Steve holds his hands out, and he gasps.

“You met your soulmate!”

“Yeah, Buck.” He chuckles breathlessly. “We share the same soulmate.” Mind still trying to wrap itself around that fact. He’d heard of sharing a soulmate before. But it’s super rare. They would talk about it in school, he was sure the last known double soulbond was over seventy years ago or something. Maye he’ll look it up later.

“How…” Bucky starts and then stops, not sure which question of a million in his head he should ask first. “What?”

“He has two soul marks Bucky. I touched him and- and my marks changed.” Steve looks down again. Following Bucky’s pinched gaze.

“What did he say?” Bucky asks finally stringing a sentence together.  

“That’s the conflicting part… there was this fire in his apartment- one that got put out almost right away so don’t worry.” Steve quickly adds when Bucky looks concerned. “But I pushed him out of the way which is why I touched him in the first place. Although sitting there on the floor with him… he looked so tired.”

Tired was just the easiest way to explain it. Tony looked downright weary, and small. The clothes on him were obviously two sizes too big, and the dark circles under Tony’s eyes were deep and large. He looked worn out completely.

Not to mention the way he flinched when Steve reached out to help him stand afterwards.

“He’s kind of fidgety. I can see why he might have ran when you met him. He got this really big panic look when I got close to him.” Steve continues. Bucky stands silently a moment, before looking down to the ground. He’s thinking ahead, trying to see where Steve is leading him in this conversation and from the sound of it, it’s not good.

“So- he doesn’t want to meet me?” Bucky asks. 

“Oh no, that’s not it at all.” Steve shook his head. “Actually, I asked if we could come back tomorrow. You know, plan things and give him time to… I don’t know, prepare himself? Everything we’ve done was pretty sudden and I get the feeling he doesn’t like sudden very much.”

“Yeah maybe.” Bucky nods. Thinking about how the man never actually looked Bucky in the eyes. It was while he was pacing he figured that out. He was trying to remember every detail about his soulmate down to the color of his eyes, but that’s when he realized he didn’t know, because Tony had always looked down. At first, he looked to his pockets, then he looked at the weights. Even after they’d touched, Tony looked to his hand, and his own soulmark and ran off. “Maybe he’s shy.”

Steve nods. “Like Bruce.”

Bucky snorts. “Bruce isn’t shy. He’s just got some severe OCD. He doesn’t like when people touch his stuff or him. He’s got his own way of doing things.”

“Yeah like eating all the snickers out of the vending machine.”

Bucky laughs. “He has to click the numbers 172, whenever he wants something. It makes him calm or something.”

“Or he just likes the snickers. You think it’s all mental- but Natasha told me he’s basically just a little shit and likes to mess with people.”

“Or he’s both.” Bucky shrugs. A car honks loudly behind them on the road at a biker who was still in the way when the light changed and Steve rolled his eyes, after wincing a bit. Downsides to having a stronger hearing.

“Let’s go home.” He says, and Bucky’s eyes go back up to the building, and Steve gets it. The want, the pull. Out of all his fears and waiting, he never considered having a soulmate that seemed to be avoiding them. He’d give himself the benefit of the doubt and look on the bright side, like at least Tony didn’t run this time. But then again, they were in his apartment, there wasn’t really anywhere to run to. “Tomorrow.” Steve reminds him, and Bucky smiles.

“Tomorrow.”

_

Tony sits on the floor and just stares at the door. He’s too tired to move, too tired to even go over and lock the door, thank god Jarvis can do that for him.

“Lock the doors Jay.” He whispers to the air. The three clicks locking into place give him some relief. He lays down on the carpeted floor. Thankful for its softness but knowing it’d make no real difference to him as exhausted as he is. He’s slept on his workbench regularly; the floor is an upgrade. “Also unmute. Sorry about that buddy.”

“It is alright Sir, I understand that you sometimes need space. Even from me.” The AI replies for the first time in hours. Tony still doesn’t understand how he managed to code compassion and empathy into his AI but he’s damn grateful for it sometimes.

“Not true big guy.” Tony shakes his head. “The only one I don’t need a break from is you.” Dum-E chirps quietly from the corner and Tony smiles. “You too, Dum Dum. You two always have my back.”

He looks over at the workbench and see’s the foam still piled up. He’s not looking forward to clearing that mess. “Hey Dum-E, you wanna get started cleaning that mess up?” He points to the desk and Dum-E chirps happily, rolling his wheels moving towards the table picking up a random oil spotted rag and randomly wiping at the mess with jagged movements. Tony smiles and lays flat out, starfished almost. No way Dum-E is going to get the entire mess up, but he could make it less work for him later. Then again Dum-E might also make it more of a mess somehow. Tony’s too tired to care.

He closes his eyes and falls asleep almost immediately.

_

Two hours later Tony was blinking his eyes awake. Finding Dum-E, chirping over him. He blinks up at the machine and smiles.

“Hey.” he grows. Dum-E chirps loudly and Jarvis speaks. 

“Sir you have been asleep for two hours and twenty minutes. You haven't eaten in nineteen hours. I suggest eating and getting more rest.”

 Tony sits up slowly yawning and stretching his limbs. His stomach cramps and then rumbles loudly. “Sure thing.” He stands, making his way to the kitchen and looking through the fridge for his options.  Eventually he settles on a sandwich. He haphazardly throws the ingredients on the counter behind him.

He makes two sandwiches sloppily because he's still half asleep, and he throws everything back in the fridge, and takes a huge bite. Grabbing a rag from the drawer and wets it then wipes the counter lightly before grabbing his plate and moving towards the workbench.

Dum-E made a decent dent in the mess of foam and oil. He sighs when he sees the state of his blueprints and drafts all burned and charred. He's lost a good amount of information but its fine. He’ll write it all back up later. He takes the rag in one hand, sandwich in other and eats as he cleans. Once the oil and foam are mostly up he throws the rag away and moves onto sorting. Burnt and not burnt. He'll copy everything down and make backups later. For now it's just making sure he doesn't leave this huge mess here.

He’s going to have to mop the floor later because it’s slippery with oil. Otherwise he's done for now. He finishes the sandwiches and takes the plate back to the kitchen before he heads to the bathroom. He takes a long shower because it relaxes him and soothes his aches and sore muscles.

He dries himself off and drops onto the bed not bothering to put clothes on. He doesn't fall asleep immediately this time. It always takes a while to fall asleep if he doesn't literally pass out from exhaustion.

He knows why. It's the anticipation and anxiety. It's the nightmares. The nightmares are the worst. Always reliving that night over and over again.

The night his parents died.

He was fourteen and it was just before Christmas. They'd all just got back from a short vacation in the Bahamas and were jetlagged. Howard had decided to drive since Jarvis had been across the city with his own family.

The road was slick with a thin layer of dark ice, and when Howard turned the car spun out of control. Tony had been looking down at a new upgrade design for Dum-E and didn't see it. But he felt it as suddenly he was yanked hard to the right and the seatbelt had tightened and dug deep into his chest and neck.

The glass in his window had broken and sprayed toward him giving stinging cuts to his face. The force of impact had sent them knocking forward. Howard's head hitting the steering wheel. Killing him almost instantly. The entire front of the car had been dented in. Bits and pieces of the engine had been sent flying into the car through the dash lodging them in Maria's neck and Tony's chest. He was impaled right down the middle by a large piece.

He was stuck, leg crushed between the jammed seats and metal piercing him open. And he had listened to his mother gurgle on her own blood calling for Howard to wake up until she died.

He passed out from blood loss before the ambulance came and when he woke up in the hospital two days later he went numb at hearing Obie would be taking care of him until he turned eighteen and took over the company.

Every night he dreams he’s back in that car, reliving it all over again. Sometimes it changes, sometimes it gets worse.

Tony takes a deep breath and closes his eyes, digging his face into his pillow. If he psyches himself out, he’s really not going to fall asleep. Then he’ll be right back where he started.

_

“Double-bonded- a person with more than one soulmate, holding a more than one soulbond.” Steve reads off from his computer.

Bucky continues reading it over his shoulder. “While the cause for these double-bonds is unknown, they seem to function the same way all soulbonds do. When one mate dies their bond and bondmark fade. When touched, the Bondmark reveals its color. Double bonded- have separate soulbonds, separate marks, and separate colors.”

“So, there aren’t any three-way soulbonds?” Steve asks, skimming the rest of the Wikipedia page.

“You mean like all three? No, it says that’s never been documented.” Bucky shakes his head. “We’ve got the same soulmate.” Bucky says, dropping heavily onto the couch folding his arms over his chest in thought. “Who woulda thunk.” He laughs. Steve laughs and turns from the computer.

“I mean, if anyone was going to share a soulmate, who better than us?”

“What’s that supposed to mean? You got the hots for me Stevie?” 

“No.” He denies loudly with a laugh. “But we are extremely comfortable each other. Or so we’ve been told only a hundred times.”

“Yeah.” Bucky agrees. “Didn't Fury call us co-dependent?”

“Twice.” Steve laughs remembering that. It probably has something to do with them always demanding shifts together. Even then Fury can’t deny them, they just seem to always get more done when they work together. Not to mention their moods are great when they’re on the same shifts. They just make it that much more bearable to get things done.

“We’ve lived together what? Ten years now?” Bucky asks, looking around at their cramped apartment. 

“That sounds like so long.”

“We’ve been friends for over more than half our lives.”

“Yeah.” Bucky smiles. They had been friends since that first day they met in the hospital, Bucky was drugged up, missing an arm, and Steve had told him some stupid Joke. He didn't even remember it now. Just that it had been so dumb that he laughed at the pointlessness of it. He remembered how it distracted him from his arm, how he’d be without it for the rest of his life. Somehow in a traumatic event a completely sunny-haired stranger made him laugh his ass off to a horrible joke.

That's how they worked. They fit each other in times of tragedy. Helping them see the light and keep moving. They also just understood each other. Made up for what the other lacked, they could always lean on each other. Steve’s right. If Bucky had to share anything as important as a soulmate with someone, he’d want it to be with Steve.

_

Tony jolts awake an hour later and Jarvis informs him it was exactly an hour and thirteen minutes. At this point every minute counts towards a better day for Tony’s state of mind. He wipes his eyes and gets out of bed and dresses. He knows he’s not going to get any more sleep at this point. He rarely ever sleeps more than three hours a day. And that's if he sleeps.

Boxers and a T-shirt on, he's leaving his room. He could eat but he's feeling lazy and he ate an hour ago. He's fine. He heads to the workbench and does a more detailed cleaning. Wiping down his chair and mopping the floor.

By the time he's done cleaning the underside of the desk. The room smells of lemons and bleach. He opens the far window behind the tv and breathes the fresh air and takes in the sounds of the city. It's been a stressful 24 hours. Jarvis was right about sleep. He feels less anxious now. But it's not all gone. Hid arms feel sore and his feet ache but it's duller now.

What’s bothering him most is the fact that they're coming back. His soulmates.

“I met my soulmates Jay.” Tony comments still looking out the window.

“I gathered that from your earlier conversation.” he says, Tony nods. “Would you like me to look them up?”

Looking them up would be smart, right? Figure out who they are. If they are trustworthy.

_It’s you who can't be trusted._

Tony shakes his head and closes the window. Ignoring the voice. Looking them up would be bad anyway. The internet paints a biased and misinformed picture of anyone. All Tony needs for proof is to look up himself.  So many lies, so many things they get wrong. So many people all interested in Tony Stark and Stark industries with their opinions and comments.

Yet none of them truly know anything about him.

“No. Don't look them up.” Tony wants to know the real them. Well, that is if he gets to know them at all. He slides to the floor and lifts his shirt looking down at the soulmark on his hip.

It's so strange seeing a color to it after all this time. He pulls the collar with his other hand seeing the blue out of the corner of his eye. 

“I found my soulmates.” he whispers to himself.  Sliding his hands over them.  He takes a few deep breaths as his heartbeat increases. He's met his soulmates, and they want to come back. They want to introduce formally and who knows what else.

That scares him. Two people who might want to be in his life.  This life he's carved out for himself perfectly only fitting for one so that he could be alone. Because alone is safer.

But that doesn't mean Tony likes being alone.

“Tomorrow.” he whispers. “They're coming back tomorrow.”

_

Bucky had to work a shift at two, so Steve spent most of his day sketching what little he remembered of Tony’s face. He was shading in the dark bags under the man’s eyes when Bucky came home.

“Hey.” Steve says as Bucky walks over sitting on the couch next to him. The smell of sweat and musk hit Steve’s nose hard and he grimaces slightly, trying to ignore the scent. Bucky drops his head back momently on the couch.

“Rumlow’s back.”

Steve’s eyes go wide, and he drops his pencil. “What?”

“You heard me.” Now It’s starting to make sense why Bucky seems so irritated. He left this afternoon walking cloud nine, fantasying about Tony and meeting him tomorrow, now he’s back to grumpy Bucky.

“There’s no way Fury hired that asshole back.”

Bucky sighs, rubbing a hand over his face. “He was never technically fired. They just transferred him to a different gym, and I guess they realized he was a piece of shit, and sent him back.”

Steve snorts bitterly. Brock was a grade school stereotypical bully that never got put in his place and became an adult bully. Or as Steve and Bucky like to call him- an asshole. Since this isn’t high school, and he can push kids heads into toilets and shove shoulders in crowded hallways, he likes to do things the only way he can. Abuse of power.

He’s technically outranking most people in the gym. In fact, the only person who doesn’t have to answer to him, is Fury, which means of course, Fury is the only one Brock doesn’t act like a complete and total asshole towards.

“Did he say anything to you?” Steve asks.

“Besides a thirty-minute rant on the broken stall in the locker room and how the entire gym has gone to shit in his absence? No not really.”

Steve rolls his eyes. “And so it begins…” Steve really doesn’t want to deal with Brocks shit. He’s had enough bullies in his life, and he’s over them. “We should kill him and hide his body in one of the punching bags like a piñata.” He suggests aloud.

Bucky bursts out in a fit of laughter so strong her doubles over clutching his stomach. Steve laughs along at the sight of him.

“I wish.” Bucky eventually wheezes out between deep lungsful of air. He wipes a built-up tear from the corner of his eye, and chuckles thinking about the words again. He only manages to stop laughing when his gaze drops down to the sketchbook. But that only makes him another kind of breathless.

Bucky is no stranger to Steve’s drawing talents. It was something he’d picked up as a child. Considering he could never go outside and play, nor did he have friends. He needed something to do to pass the time. Something other than taking his medicine and homework his mother drew up for him.

Steve once told Bucky it started with a butterfly. One just outside his window while he had been so sick he couldn’t get out of bed to even press his face against the glass and watch it flutter in the wind. Steve was sad when it’d flown out of view and instead decided he’d find some way to keep those things with him forever.

So, Steve would memorize things as soon as he’d seen them he’d commit the image to memory. Then he’d hold onto it until he got to a paper and a pen. Sometimes he’d even draw it on his skin if he was desperate enough.

It took a few years for him to actually draw something that looked realistic, or perfect compared to the image in his mind’s eye. But once he did, he mastered it. Now, he could look at almost anything and draw it perfectly to scale in minutes. Almost as if you’d snapped a photo and printed it out.

Bucky had seen Steve do that hundreds of times. He had drawings of Steve’s framed and placed around the apartment all over. But never had he seen any picture look quite so alive. Almost like it was a real person trapped between the pages that would move at any moment and call for help or try their escape. Bucky reaches out for the sketch, tracing the darkest shading with his finger.

The sketch is of Tony looking up and his eyes focused just off to the right, his lips parted perfectly into a small effortless smile and a diamond twinkle in his eye, he’s leaned back against the floor. Hair mussed and palms flat against the found elbows straight keeping his posture up. Almost like he’s caught seconds before a laugh.

He’s shirtless. Two blue handprints on his shoulders, and one red on his hip. The only colors in the entire sketch, making them stand out.

“Wow.” Bucky whispers, eyes studying every inch of the sketch over and over. Steve raises a hand to scratch the back of his neck and looks a little embarrassed.

“Do you like it?” He asks hesitantly. “I didn’t actually see him shirtless, or the soulmarks.” He mumbles. “I didn’t see him smile either. A lot of it is me imagining and guessing. Did I get your mark right?” Bucky smiles and looks up at Steve with a hint of disbelief.

“You got it exactly right. This looks amazing.”

“You can keep it if you want.” Steve shrugs. “I’ve been drawing for a while.”

“Hell yeah I’m keeping this.” Bucky takes the picture out of the sketchbook carefully making sure not to tear it. He feels the page between his fingers before his mind catches up with the second half of Steve’s statement and gets a wicked grin. “And show me the others! What else have you been ‘imagining’? Less clothes I’m assuming.”

Steve snatches his sketchbook away before Bucky can start flipping through. “No! That’s- no.” He shakes his head. “Get away from me, you stink. Take a shower.” Steve says shoving him away as he reaches for the sketchbook again.

“Fine, fine. Whatever. Keep the nudes to yourself. This is good enough for me.” Bucky throws over his shoulder, still smiling down at this image of Tony. Of his soulmate. Someone he’s never hasn’t officially met. But someone he can already feel himself drawn to.

God, just looking at the sketch makes him want to draw Tony into his arms and never let go.

Steve shakes his head, and starts drawing on the next free page. This seems like a good way to make the day pass. It’s the only thing keeping him patient enough to wait for tomorrow.

_

Steve and Bucky go through the rest of their day relatively normally. Which means Steve draws while Bucky watches T.V, most likely the same one he’s seen a million times already, but still laughs at every joke, still gets emotional at every scene, and is almost surprised by big plot twists as if it’s the first time he’s seeing it.

The processes is as baffling as it is annoying.

That’s what happens for the rest of the day. Except for the occasional panic attack about the fact that they both have the same soulmate and they are both going to see him tomorrow.   But they are fine. It only happens like once an hour every hour.

The real panic was the next day. Because not only was Bucky freaking out trying to find something to wear all over again, Steve was too.

Their shirts were either too tight, or too lose. Having his arms out felt wrong, but having sleeves felt wrong as well. Wearing blue felt too on the nose with his soulmark, but not wearing blue just felt weird, because suddenly it occurred to Steve seventy-percent of his wardrobe was blue!

Why hasn’t anyone told him this? He doesn’t know.

It takes them about two hours and an entire eruption of both their closets, and one quick trip to the store so Bucky can get a new glove.

Yeah, it was a stressful event.

_

Tony’s not doing much better himself.

He hadn’t gotten any more sleep. He’d stayed up copying and rewriting most of his lost designs and prototypes. He also spent about three hours fixing his soldering iron. He could have just bought a new one, but paranoia has set in hard these last few days. Tools for building were exactly the kind of thing Killian would be monitoring for purchases on the lookout for Tony, and ‘better safe than sorry’ has become his new motto.

So, if he doesn’t have it, or it’s broken, he builds or fixes it.

That was four hours ago.

Now he’s panicking. 

He’s standing in front of the door bouncing on the heels of his feet lightly waiting. Feeling the nerves build. “S-should I cook?” Suddenly bursts out his mouth, a million thoughts and that one broke free. He looks up to the ceiling as he asks. “I need to offer food, right? That's what people do.”

“While it is courteous to offer a drink and maybe a snack while having guests I believe cooking would only add to your anxiety. I suggest ordering something.”

“Okay yeah, that sounds good. Order pizza- no wait three pizzas. One cheese, one pepperoni, and one supreme. Tony thinks hard about this trying to consider all the factors as if this were coding or sketching new designs. “What if they’re lactose intolerant? What if they don't like pizza?”

“It is possible for them to be lactose intolerant, and not like pizza. But they are not coming for the food, Sir. It's just you trying to be nice. I believe no matter the food preference or intolerance they will understand the gesture.”

Tony fidgets a little more. Curling his toes in the carpet. Just to give his mind something to focus on while he debates it mentally before settling. 

“Yeah okay. Get soda.” He adds, almost bouncing from foot to foot.

“What kind, Sir?”

“Uh all of them?” He shrugs.

“I’d like to remind you they have twenty soda options.”

Tony sighs. “But I don't know what they like.”

“Might I suggest we limit it to three choices as you did with the pizza.”

“Yeah yeah, okay. That works. Get uh Pepsi, Mountain Dew, and uh pick a third for me.”

“Alright, sir. Would you like anything else?”

“I don't know.” He sighs dropping his head in his hands. “What do you think I should get?”

“I believe you have everything you need.”

Tony silently wishes Pepper were here she has a great at always knowing what you need for any occasion. This is something he really wants her help with. But he can't call her.  Once she knows there will be no stopping her from trying to find him. She'll tell Rhody and then from there it'll spread. If Killian finds out…. He’ll be pissed.

No. No. He can't tell Pepper.

“Dessert. Get desert or something.”

“Alright, Sir. Will that complete the order?”

“Yeah. Yes. Yeah.” Nods finally after much hesitation.

“The order has been sent.”

“Thanks, Jay.” He sighs, already feeling more relaxed with that taken care of. He looks at the watch on his wrist checking the time. Steve hadn’t said exactly when they’d be here, but he can just feel it, any minute now.

He flinches hard when a soft knock comes on the door right in front of him, He takes a deep breath, and opens the door.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter held me hostage and literally wouldn't let me find a natural place to end it. This easily could have been ten thousand words. But I have a six hour drive i have to do, and then i'm going to be busy the next few days, so I had to end it. 
> 
> Also don't hold me to it, but there might be some smut, or a little bit of E-rated activities next chapter. Idk yet. I need to sleep first.

“Okay. You knock.” Steve says as they stop in front of the door.

“What? No, you knock.”

“I can't, what if punch a hole through the wall?” Steve asks, and it’s a serious question. He’s nervous, he can feel it in the pit of his stomach, and it’s hard to control himself when he’s nervous.

“You knocked on it last time.”

“That was before I knew he was my soulmate.” Steve hisses. Bucky rolls his eyes.

“Punk.

“Jerk.”

Bucky raised his hand and knocked the door lightly. He was too nervous to knock harder, and Steve worried for a moment that Tony might not have been able to hear it, but sure enough, seconds later, the door pulled open and they were both met with a wide-eyed Tony.

Bucky’s breath catches in his throat, and he freezes. God this was his soulmate. He’s waited so long for this.

“Uh, hi,” Tony says after a beat.

“Hi,” Steve says back, and Bucky can only bring himself to stare. Tony avoids the obvious gaze, refusing to meet it, and instead his eyes drop to their hands. More importantly what is in their hands. Flowers. Specifically, red amaryllis and yellow lilies. Tony smiles down at them.

“Y-you got me flowers?”

“Is it too much? We didn’t know if we should, and when we saw them, it just felt right.” Steve shrugs, looking around nervously.

“No, it’s-” Tony shakes his head and quickly darts into the kitchen he’d cleaned out some of the beakers and flasks earlier and left them on the dry rack. He fills two of the largest ones with water and walks back over. “Here.”

Steve and Bucky do their best to place them in the flasks. Tony’s smile only widens once they settle and he moves to place them on the marble countertop. He gently pets the petals smiling at them. He looks back up to see them standing in the doorway and he chuckles.

“You can come in.” They both smile and step in awkwardly, closing the door behind them. Like they feel out of place, and honestly to Tony they are. This is his space. No other person has been here since the remodeling. It’s just him, Dum-E and Jarvis. But it’s fine. Jarvis has security protocols and if anything goes wrong he’ll be fine. Everything was fine.

Tony realizes that’s why they aren’t talking. Goodness, he’s such an idiot. He literally ran from one and the other he practically ushered out of the building. They’re waiting for him to not act like mental case.

_How are you going to pull that off when you are a mental case?_

Tony takes a deep breath and decides to wing it. He’s good at talking to people. Faking smiles, charming ass-hats. Even when he doesn’t want to he’s good at it. It may have been a while but he could at least try.

 “You got the only two flowers in existence that I’d recognize just by looking at them.” Aside from roses, and sunflowers. But these flowers- they actually mean something to him. “The amaryllis are my favorite, and the lilies are my mom’s favorite. Well, were.” He meant to correct that in his head, but he’s talking and it comes out anyway.

“I’m glad then.” Steve smiles, and carefully nudges Bucky with his elbow so he’ll stop gawking and actually say something.

Bucky clears his throat. “Yeah, uh me too.”

“I see you’ve got the fire and everything cleaned up,” Steve says, finally bringing himself to relive some of the tension in the air. Tony looks over to the workstation, thinking back to the way it looked when Steve last saw it.

“Yeah, it’s pretty much habit by now. There are lots of fires in this apartment.” He chuckles to himself thinking back to some of them. He’s got a tiny mark on his wrist from one a few weeks ago.

“That doesn’t sound good,” Bucky mutters, Tony barely has to hold back and eye roll, he almost forgot he’s not talking to Rhody or Pepper. They don’t yet know things tend to explode when Tony’s involved.

“it’s not as bad as it sounds. I could probably follow a few more safety rules but where’s the fun in safety?”

“Living,” Bucky says.

“Hasn’t killed me yet.” Tony counters shrugging his shoulders. He remembers this conversation, he’s had it multiple times. He’s good at defending his work, and easy banter. He can already feel himself relaxing. 

“So, what exactly is all this?” Steve asks, gesturing to the workstation. It’s unorganized, even once he did manage to clean up, it’s still a mess from his work only hours ago. It’s nothing like his lab back at SI. That place is immaculate, everything has a place, even if it doesn’t look like it to outside eyes, the mess is calculated. Tony could navigate that place blindfolded and one arm behind his back. He looks at the sad excuse he has been demoted to in his hiding and tires not to feel morbid about it again.

“Oh, it’s my workstation. It’s where my ideas come to fruition or die.” More fruition than dying. Dying isn’t even really dying either. They just go to a pile on the floor until he remembers it later after he’s binged on another project and finally has space in his mind for it. He’s currently trying to put ideas together for a Stark smart car. He’s not sure he liked the design yet, or if it’s going to run as quietly as he invasions it. He’ll need a working model first to test out- but he’s getting off track in his mind, this isn’t the time to start working again.

“Is this a hobby- or a job?” Steve asks.

“Both.” Tony shrugs. He knows Obie would have called this a hobby. Anything other than building weapons is a hobby in that man’s eyes. But to Tony this is work. Ever since he turned eighteen and gained full control of Stark industries it’s been work. They haven’t sold a single weapon or made a weapon design in over ten years and he’s damn proud of it, even if Obie keeps trying to push him into starting it up again. “I’m an engineer.” He says, leaving out the fact that he’s technically a lot more than that.

There’s a knock at the door and Tony almost flinches. Almost. But he’s got this under control. He can be a functioning adult for one day. Or for at least a few hours while they are here.

“I ordered pizza.” He explains when they both look to the door confused. He quickly walks over talking a mile a minute. “I didn’t know if you’d be hungry, and I don’t really have anything in the fridge, and even if I did, I don’t really know what you like. But if you don’t like pizza you obviously don’t have to eat it. It won’t hurt my feelings or anything. Not that you have to worry about my feelings!”

He talks nonstop as he opens the door, holds onto the pizza as it’s handed to him along with the sodas in a thin plastic bag. He talks as he closes it behind him, and sets everything on the kitchen counter. It’s only then that he realizes just how much he’s going on. So he stops, takes a breath, and mumbles an apology. Keeping his back to them because he doesn’t even want to see the look on their faces.

_I’ve told you about the rambling. It’s unattractive. No one likes a rambler._

Bucky and Steve share an amused look behind his back. Not needing words to communicate their shared thoughts of how Tony’s kind of adorable.

“It’s actually good you got pizza,” Bucky says, walking over to the counter, Steve following his lead. “Stevie here is always hungry, and I mean always. He can eat enough for six.”

“Buck.” Steve elbows him lightly in the side, as his face turns red in embarrassment. Steve doesn’t usually tell people just how much he can actually eat in a day. Or how much he really wants to eat in a day. His eating habits are the main reason why Bucky has to hog food sometimes. More often than not Steve will eat all the food in the kitchen. It’s been that way ever since he went through that drug trial.

Bucky probably would feel bad about using that to help smooth the conversation along, but when he sees the tension in Tony’s shoulders relax, he doesn’t care what it took to get him back to that. Tony chuckles lightly.

“That’ll stop all the food from going bad.” He doesn’t mean to imply that he intends to have them stick around, or even move in or whatever the hell else it might sound like he’s implying. But it’s true anyway. Food tends to last so long in this apartment that it often goes bad. Never will he forget the smell of the rotten lettuce that sat in the back of the fridge for a whole month. He opens the boxes and walks around the counter grabbing plates and cups for the three of them.

“Your apartment’s nice,” Steve says, and Bucky hums through a bite of his pizza.

“And Big.”

“Thanks.” Tony’s says, picking the olives off his slices and pushing them to the further side of his place. He grimaces down at them a little.

“Don’t like olives?” Bucky asks.

“Not the black ones.” He makes a face as the sauce gets under his nial. “I usually remember to make sure they don’t put them on, but I was kind of panicking, as I’m sure you can tell.”

“Got no idea what you’re talkin’ about.” Bucky smiles. Tony can’t stop himself from smiling back. Even with pizza pushed to the side of his cheek Tony can’t deny how attractive Bucky looks, Steve too. Both tall, strong, easy smiles, and piercing eyes. They fit each other almost perfectly.

Which probably should make him happy right? Two super-hot, super buff soulmates, that could be anyone’s wet dream. To Tony it only made him feel smaller. Lesser. Undeserving.

These aren’t exactly new emotions for Tony. He’s struggled with them all his life. It seems that’s just how it goes for children with rights to million-dollar companies before they’re even born. Children who live in the shadows of greats expected on day to shine brighter.

So, either bone-crushing depression or arrogance so thick you could suffocate in it. 

He thinks he did a good job pretending to be the latter. Everyone seemed to believe Tony Stark had skin so thick you couldn’t break it with a pickaxe much less words, and for the most part that’s true. He doesn’t give a damn what a bunch of strangers say or think about him. He’s gotten enough hate mail to know that for himself.

It’s the people close to him that can really cut him deep.

Ever since he was a kid he’s been seeking approval from the people around him. Always needing confirmation or reassurance. Which may or may not be normal for a child. Almost all kids look up to their parent’s and hope to be just like them, or better.

Tony was. He was smart just like Howard, skipping grades, building AI’s. The makings of a next Gen genius. That’s what the newspapers and magazines had said. That was before they died though. After that, the headlines all changed. No longer talking about potential, but tragedy, and after that changed, they started to talk about him. How he’d need to take over, if he was ready, how the deaths of his family would change the sweet boy with a robot best friend.

Playboy, arrogant, drug addict, alcoholic.

Too bad none of it was true. Alcoholic maybe. Tony likes to drink, so what? It’s not like he does it every day, it’s not like he gets blackout drunk either. Everyone only thinks he’s an addict because he took his medication in public one time, and Obie would rather tell everyone he has a problem with drugs than mental health.

Honestly, Tony rathers it too.

Why not be like all the other billionaire’s wilding out, instead of the freak who hears his parent’s voices in his head. Constantly tormenting him. It’s his own special brand of survivor’s guilt. That’s what Killian had told him all those years ago when he finally opened up about it.

It’s not ghosts and it’s not insanity. Tony believes all the things the voices say. He’s telling them to himself, but somewhere along the line, he hears it as his parents. His way of torturing himself. Deciding that he doesn’t deserve to live if they can’t so he makes his own life a living hell.

Acceptance, that’s what Killian said would help get rid of them forever. His medication a temporary fix. Was- was a temporary fix. He doesn’t have it anymore. He ran out of his last bottle and refilling it wasn’t an option. He couldn’t be found. He’d rather live in his personal hell than go back.

This was better.

“Tony?”

Tony snaps his head up, ugh, he’s spaced out again.

“Yep?”

“I asked if you had any roommates.”

“Oh, uh no.” He shakes his head and tried not to laugh at the idea. Literally, the only person in the world he could stand living with was Rhody. Maybe Pepper, but they are not really good together long term.

Bucky nods, wondering how hard it is to become an engineer because if it gets him an apartment this good, he will gladly do whatever it takes. But the question was more to get some information. He didn’t see a wedding band on Tony’s finger, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t in a relationship. When Tony didn’t respond he looked up to see that blank expression he’d had at the gym before. Just staring off into nothing.

Steve had been trying to balance keeping up the conversation while maintaining full focus and control of his body. Not making sudden movements, and definitely not breaking the cup or plate Tony handed him. He’d silently been taking deep breathes to keep calm and just not break anything. He didn’t want to ruin this, especially not for Bucky too. Who he knows despite his uncanny ability to try and flirt, he’s still nervous.

“The rent for this place must be insane,” Steve says, their apartment is only three-fifty a month, but it’s also a piece of shit and tiny. Their apartment could probably fit in Tony’s living room. If he doesn’t have roommates then he’s footing the bill himself and that must be a small fortune or something.

“Uh rent.” Tony nods, biting into his pizza purposefully. “It’s crazy.” He says around the bite. Rent isn’t something Tony’s ever done. Starks don’t rent, they don’t borrow. They own, and they sell. That’s it. Tony bought the apartment, all four apartments. Onetime payment and all he pays now are bills.

The question only serves to snap him out of whatever hope and happiness he’s managed to build. This won’t work out. It can’t. Telling them who he really is… that’s not something he ever wants. For more than one reason.

_They’ll only want you for your money, and that’s if they think the money is worth dealing with such a worthless piece of shit._

Tony inhales sharply and stands from the counter quickly, speed walking to the bathroom. “Give me a second.” He manages to yell over his shoulder as he closes the door behind him and turns the faucet on, kneeling to the ground and taking deep breaths.

This was a mistake.  He was an idiot to say they could come back. He should have just packed up Dum-E and Jarvis’ coding and left in the night like a smart person. He never wanted soulmates, never. Not since he was a kid who believed in magic and fairy tales.

He just wanted to live his life. Alone. Alone is safer.

Now they are here, in his apartment, asking questions. If they find out then- then they might tell people, and people will tell other people, and next thing you know Killian will be back. Probably with a court order of some kind. He’s threatened it before. ‘all for his own good’ or something like that. After what Tony did, just up and leaving, not so much as a goodbye, he has no idea what Killian will do. That’s the scariest part. He’s wanted to go home. To see Rhody, Pepper. He missed that ratty old couch down in the lab that always gave him a crick in the neck.

He hated to admit it, even just to himself in his head. But he missed Killian sometimes too, and it’s normal to miss him. Because besides Rhody and Pepper, Killian was the only other person Tony had trusted. Hell, he’d known Killian before he met Rhody or Pepper.

But that didn’t matter now. He left. If things go his way, he’ll never see Killian again, and… and he wasn’t going to live by what Killian had taught him. He was going to be his own person, think for himself. Which means… he should give this a chance because Killian would tell him not to. So yeah, he’s going to do it, to spite him.

He just needs a few more minutes to breathe and hopefully keep a panic attack from coming on.

_

“Well now look what you did,” Bucky mutters under his breath, dropping the crust onto his plate.

“What I did? I didn’t do anything!” Steve whisper yells.

“What’d you have to go an’ ask him about money for?”

“I didn’t ask about money… I just made an observation.”

“An observation that sent him runnin’.”

“I’m sorry, am I not allowed to make comments about an apartment we are literally in? Can I not ask questions? You asked if he had roommates. Why is what I said so bad?” 

“I was just trying to see if he was single. You’re over here trying to hint at his financial status. News flash Stevie, people are sensitive about money. Don’t bring it up on a first date. But why am I surprised you don’t know this? It’s not like you’ve ever made it to a second.” The moment it’s out of Bucky’s mouth he regrets it. It’s a low blow, a very low blow, considering the fact that Steve’s never had a second date has nothing to do with communication skills and more to do with his overly strong body.

The sudden sound of Steve’s fist hitting the counter and cracking makes him flinch so hard he almost falls out of his chair. Steve gasps sharply once he’s realized what he’s done and steps back. He just punched a hole in Tony’s perfect marble countertop.

“Oh, my fucking god.” His hands start shaking, fear, panic, and anger all fueling him and making his heart beat faster. “God fucking damn it Bucky.” His words come out barely a whisper, and his voice is a few octaves lower. He’s holding himself back from doing anything more. He knows better than to move or to try and touch anything else, in the state he’s in, it’ll only make it worse. “I was doing so good.” He was, he really was. He’d actually thought that he would get through this whole thing without breaking something. But taking a cheap shot like that… now of all times. There was no way Bucky didn’t know that’d set him off.

Bucky just stares at it, the impression of Steve’s hand and the cracks spreading out around it like a shattered mirror.

There’s no way Tony’s not going to notice that, there’s no way he’s not going to question how in the hell Steve managed to do that with his fist. He was such an asshole. He shouldn’t have said that. Really shouldn’t have, not now, not ever actually, but now was worse than any other moment, and he might have ruined it for the both of them now.

Unless…

“Don’t- don’t panic. I’ll tell him it was me.” Bucky nods, already pulling the glove off his metal hand exposing it. It makes more sense anyway. Metal beats marble counter. Hopefully, he’s never actually punched a marble counter. But it’s better than trying to explain the science experiment.

Metal prostatic that just gets a little wonky sometimes. It’s true. It’s not perfectly functional, even if he never lashes out and breaks things really.

But it’s fine. He won’t ruin this for Steve.

“What no do-” He doesn’t finish his sentence before the bathroom door is pulled open and Tony steps out. He’d heard the sound of something breaking and then Jarvis’ voice had filled the bathroom. Saying something about his threat assessment rising.

So, he quickly stood turning off the faucet and left the bathroom.

From across the room, he could already see the dent in the counter, and he was more than thoroughly confused. Steve and Bucky both froze as he stepped closer. Both not daring to say a word as they waited for Tony to react.

Tony’s originally thought had been Dum-E moved from his corner and broke something again, in a decision to play with the guests as he sometimes likes to do. But no, he’s back in his corner. If Tony’s eyes aren’t playing tricks with him, it looks like a handprint almost.

“What in the world happened?” he asks, looking up to Steve and Bucky. The two are wide-eyed and standing freakishly still, almost like they aren’t breathing. They give each other a look, but don’t move otherwise. “Are you breathing?” He asks eventually because he doesn’t want them to pass out.

They both seem to take that as permission to do so because they both inhale deeply at that.

“I- I’m sorry.” Steve begins to say, but Bucky throws his metal hand up into view and cuts him off.

“It was me! I’m sorry!”

Tony’s eyes try to follow the moving metal appendage, and his interest is instantly peaked, pulled away from the hole into the counter.

“Ooh, gimmie.” Tony actually makes a grabby hand motion towards the arm. He’s got just enough self-control not to reach out and touch it himself. Personal boundaries, he has them and respects them. Bucky looks confused a moment.

“You want to see it?” He asks, looking at Steve uncertain. Tony nods fervently.

“Please? If you don’t mind?”

Bucky steps closer hesitantly, holding his hand outstretched to him, and Tony carefully hovers over his palm with nimble fingers, before touching, almost as if he was worried that touching it might make it disappear.

Once he does, and he feels the cold metal against his fingers he smiles, and Bucky thinks this might all be a dream and he’s going to wake up now back at the gym, dozing off on his shift. That or he’s going to suddenly combust because the world will realize something impossible is happening and try to magically balance the scales of the earth.

No one ever wants to touch the arm. Well, at least they’ve never asked, and they’ve never tried. They just sort of stare and try not to mention it. Except for the few people who ask too many questions about it. That’s equally annoying.

But this isn’t annoying in the slightest. This is amazing. The only other person who touches the arm is Steve, and that’s only sometimes, maybe accidentally, or sometimes trying to help with the pains by relieving the pressure, or helping him stretch when he’s tired.

Tony’s just caressing it as if it’s something precious. Tony gently turns his hand over to look at the palm and run his fingers on the edges of the panels, watching as Bucky flexes his fingers and moves accidentally.

“The movement on this is amazing.” Tony’s entire face lights up as he speaks like there’s nothing else in the entire world that’d make him happier than this metal hand in front of him. “and the way it’s shaped to look exactly like a hand and how some of these panels mimic the palmar flexion creases.” Tony whistles. “Wow. Can I see your other hand?” Bucky nods numbly and lifts his flesh hand, palm facing up. “It’s almost identical with your real hand. This is amazing. Who made it?”

Bucky almost doesn’t register he’s being asked a question, and when he does he’s still too shocked to actually speak. Thankfully Steve does it for him. “There was a doctor, he worked for Stark Industries.”

Tony shakes his head. “No.  Stark Industries hasn’t dabbled in prosthetics since before- well- almost twenty years ago.”

Bucky nods, “That’s when I got it.”

“You’ve had this for twenty years?” Tony asks, trying to clarify because that can’t be right.

“Just about, yeah.”

“How? Who’s been doing your upgrades? Do you do the maintenance yourself? Is the resizing manual or automatic? Please whatever you say, don’t tell me it’s Hammer tech. Because I will have to kick you out.” He after a second he lies when he realizes they might take it seriously. “I’m joking. But if it’s Hammer tech please lie and say it wasn’t anyway.”

Bucky laughs and shakes his head. “I don’t do maintenance? It just does whatever.”

Tony’s left eye twitches and he has to hold himself back from launching into a huge speech about why having something, anything, for over twenty years, means it should get looked at, even if it’s not something that you use every single day, like an arm! It needs a checkup once in a while. Much like a car. You have to change the oil, spin the tires, etc. But if Bucky has never gotten it checked then Tony’s mind will literally explode, because this beautiful piece of technology deserves better.

He takes his hands back and tells himself he’s not going to make Bucky sit down and go through what would probably be a very long and invasive checkup of his arm because that would be weird.

“Your hand, your life,” Tony says, backing away, and takes a sip of his soda. Bucky doesn’t move for a moment, and neither does Steve. They’re both waiting for the real reaction, the normal reaction. The screaming, the yelling, the name calling. Anything other than just… this.

“What?” Tony asks when he realizes they’re just staring at him. “I got something on my face?”

Bucky shakes his head. “This- my arm doesn’t bother you?

“Uh… no?” Tony gets that they don’t know him. They don’t know his last name and haven’t put together his ties with Stark Industries, but if they had then they’d understand just how ridiculous that question is. “I think it’s actually really cool. I’ve seen some designs and schematics of metal prosthetics, among other things, but never have I built or seen one built. It’s nice to see a working model. It seems to move smoothly. If you hadn’t told me I would never have guessed, and that’s a blessing prosthetic wise.”

Tony isn’t just complementing it because it’s Stark tech or even because Howard must have built it. The arm truly deserves the praise. Twenty years of use and the thing looks brand new. Not a scratch or mark on it. Now he’s already mentally making plans to go through the archives and take a look at what else Howard might have made that he doesn’t know about.

Bucky looks hard at Tony’s face, trying to analyze it. He’s sure Tony must be lying or something to be polite. But everything he’s saying seems genuine.

“Really? It doesn’t scare you or freak you out? You don’t think it’s weird?”

“It’s an arm.” Tony chuckles. “Metal yes, but just an arm, and as you can see, I work with metal all the time. It’s not going to scare me. It might, however, anger my contractors when I tell them I need new counters so soon.”

“Sorry. I uh- we can pay.” Bucky says quickly when he sees Steve out of the corner of his eye drop his head down in shame.

“No uh, it’s fine.” Tony waves his hand, quickly trying to think of something. “I’ve uh, got… insurance on the stuff.”

“You have insurance on your counter?” Steve asks curiosity breaking through the shame.

“Yeah uh- I told you I have a lot of fire and work-related things going on in here. So, I got some of its insured.”

“Still…” Steve says, not feeling right. “We could pay the difference or something.” He shrugs.

“Honestly, it’s fine.” Tony waves his hands again. “I’m not worried about the counters, I barely use them anyway. Besides the marble was starting to annoy me. This will give me an excuse to maybe change it out to something else.”

Steve opens his mouth about to make another offer but Tony cuts it off quick.

“Steve, we can do this back and forth for hours if you like, but in the end, I’m not taking any money from you or Bucky. So you might as well save yourself some time, and get over it now ‘cause I already am.”

Steve sighs giving up, and Bucky smiles, this is the first time he’s seen Steve out stubborned.

“So how do the two of you know each other?” Tony asks, a while later. They’ve settled into some comfortable silence and for a little bit, none of them felt the need to fill it. But the quiet was starting to make Tony feel sluggish, and he was up all night, so it’s either talk or going to sleep. “From work?”

“Uh no.” Steve shakes his head. “We’ve known each other since we were kids. We went to high school together and we live together.”

Tony blows out a deep breath. “That’s- a long time."

“Yeah.” Steve claps Bucky on the shoulder, smiling fondly. Tony tries to ignore the ache in his chest at the sight of it. He feels like he’s intruding in on their moment, on their lives, all he can think of is what Killian said years ago.

_“What if your soulmates aren’t interested in a third? Most people like simple lives Tony, and you are anything but simple.”_

There goes his plan to keep Killian out of his head because now he’s really thinking about it. Before he was worried about soulmates crashing in on his life and ruining things. But what if he ruined things between them? After so long together they’ve probably got a great balance and harmony. Tony knows when he’s got a habit it’s damn near impossible to break. He hates people in his space messing with his things, it just… it sets everything off balance.

He doesn’t want to be the one to set them off balance.

He clears his throat and tries to sound casual when he speaks. “Are you sure you even want another soulmate?”

The confused looks on Steve and Bucky faces were almost identical.

“Whaddya mean?” Bucky asks.

“You know… I mean what you two have is probably great, I mean- since high school. That’s gotta be nothing less than amazing. Sure, you wanna just throw a random wrench in the gears and hope everything runs smoothly?”  He’s not making eye contact anymore. Suddenly his eyes are glued to one particular crack in the counter, which is absolutely destroying his casual façade.

He can see Bucky shake his head in the corner of his eye. “Are you- another soulmate? You think Stevie and I are soulmates too?”

“Well, you are right?” Tony asks, looking back up.

“No. We’re not. Just best friends.” Steve says, and now it’s Tony who looks confused.

“Tony, there’s no such thing as a three-way soulbond. Bucky and I only have one soulmate, that you. You’re the one with two bonds. Two separate bonds.”

That can’t be true. It’s rare to have more than one soulmate, but-but he always thought it was a “So you two are just… dating then?”

Bucky laughs, dropping his head into his folded arms against the shaky countertop. “No.” It comes out muffled from his arms, and he lifts his head back up before speaking. “Steve and I are just friends. No dating, not soulmates. Just friends.”

“So, I’m the only one with two soulbonds, and you two… just happen to know each other and find me in the span of a few hours?”

“Yeah.” Steve shrugs. “Or maybe it’s not a coincidence. Maybe Buck and I are such great friends because we’re meant to share a soulmate.”

“I guess that makes sense,” Tony says, but he’s not sure how he feels about it. Relieved? Or maybe even more afraid. He’s lost his only out, although he’s not entirely sure he actually wanted the out. He would try to analyze it but he should probably sleep before doing that.

He meant to say something else, keep the conversation going but a powerful yawn cut him off and now he’s really feeling it.

Both Steve and Bucky get the sense that it’s probably time to go. Steve’s got a shift this afternoon anyway, then Bucky works the night shift. Despite them not wanting to go, there’s also the powerful urge not to overstay their welcome and possibly mess things up.

“It’s probably time we go,” Steve says, and Tony nod.

“Yeah, sure.” Tony’s kind of thankful he said it because he didn’t want to kick them out just so he could take a nap. They all stand, and Tony walks them to the door. Tony’s just opened the door when Bucky suddenly turns, looking a bit nervous again.         

“Can I hug you?” He asks, looking like he’s physically stopping himself from just doing it, and Tony is more than thankful for that. Today had gone differently than he expected. He’d originally planned to try and tell them he hadn’t wanted soulmates. But then they came, with flowers, the only flowers in the world that could mean something to him, and he just couldn’t bring himself to say it. No matter how the voices tormented, no matter how much he doubted, no matter how broken or messed up he thinks he is and how better off they’d be without him. He couldn’t form the words in his mouth and say them, and now he’s starting to forget why he’d ever want to get rid of them.

“Yeah.” Tony smiles. “Just uh, no funny business.” It’s partially a joke. Tony's sure the contact might be fine. But anything else… the last person who’d touched him was Killian and that was horrible.

“Scouts honor.” That’s all Bucky says before Tony finds himself face first pressed against a very muscled chest and the smell of pizza and coconut fills his nose. The pizza he knows where came from, the coconut is very much a mystery, but he doesn’t mind.

It takes his brain a few seconds to catch up and remember that he should probably be hugging back. Lord, it’s been too long since he’s had actual physical contact with someone. He raises his arm slowly and wraps them around Bucky as well, which only seems to encourage the man to hug tighter, and press his nose into Tony’s hair and inhale deeply.

Something inside Tony just finally clicks into place and he just feels safe. Six months of hiding. Adding locks, dodging phone calls, and having Jarvis watch over him all hours of the day, and it’s only right now that he’s actually ever felt safe.

They just stay like that for a few minutes, then Tony remembers Steve and this might be getting awkward for him to just watch. He loosens his arms and Bucky tightens his just a fraction before letting go as well and stepping back.

Tony looks to Steve who’s back is now turned to them. “Come on, Blondie. I’m giving out free hugs. You don’t want one?”

Steve turns around, surprised as if he thought Tony wouldn’t want to give him one. But he doesn’t say anything before stepping over and hugging Tony so gently he’s not really sure it counts as a hug. He pulls away after about three seconds, and Tony’s kind of confused at the major differences in hugs the two give.

Maybe Steve isn’t that big a fan of physical touch.

Tony ignores it and smiles as they head to the elevator. They push the button and that’s when Steve realizes something.

“Oh, we forgot to get your number.”

“It’s alright.” Tony shrugs. “Jarvis will send it to you.” Then he closes his front door. Locks it, and drops down on the couch in the living room, too tired to even bother with cleaning up.

_

The elevator doors open, and they step inside. Steve tries to remember if the name is supposed to mean something to him if Tony maybe mentioned it before but he’s at a loss.

“Who the hell is Jarvis?” Bucky asks, almost reading Steve mind.

“I have no idea.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took a while, I got busy with life and other fics. This isn't abandoned I swear, I have the ending written and everything, it's just the middle parts i'm working on. 
> 
> Thank you for your patience!

The walk back home was quiet and quick. Steve expected Bucky to be nothing but a chatty cathy but he was surprised to get nothing but silence from the man. He might still be feeling guilty about the comment before and setting Steve off. But he more than made up for it by putting himself out there and taking the blame for Steve. Bucky had no idea that Tony would be so amazingly okay with the arm. Not only accepting it but actually seeming to like it.

Steve earlier said that if anyone would be okay with it, it’d be Tony.

He hadn’t expected to be so right about that.

Once they got to the apartment Steve meant to pull Bucky aside and make it clear that all was forgiven. But Bucky it seems had other plans. Darting to his room, and barely giving himself time to say “See you at work.” before closing the door behind him.

Steve was stunned but decided to leave it until later. He had to get ready and prepare himself to deal with Rumlow.

_

Bucky had a problem. Well- it’s not really a problem. It’s a slight inconvenience.

Long story short, he’s been hard since he hugged Tony. Which is embarrassing, he’s not a teenager, hugs shouldn’t give him full boners that he can’t will away no matter how hard he tried, and he tried hard.

He thought about sharks, scary movies, and prune juice.

He’d pinched the side of his leg as best he could without drawing attention and the pain did nothing to waver his hardness. His mind kept circling back to Tony, how warm his skin was, the smell of his hair. Just the thought of his body in Bucky’s arms.

He waited until he heard Steve get in the shower before he dares to do anything about it.

Gripping himself through his pants, he groans lowly, not daring to be any louder knowing Steve’s good hearing. He bites his lips to prevent any more sounds, continuing to squeeze and release pressure. Thoughts all of Tony. It’s not long before he finishes just like that. Sitting on his bed, still fully dressed. Giving out fast-paced ragged breaths.

_

Tony wakes up two hours after he fell asleep according to Jarvis. He’s awoken by the sound of Dum-E doing his best to clean up the pizza and plates.

His best isn’t really a great job. Tony sighs, sitting up, getting his balance and walking over, eyeing the counter for a moment.

“I should get a mold of this and set it out somewhere. It’s like almost a perfect impression of his hand. God that must have taken a lot of strength.” Tony says to himself shaking his head, pressing his finger into it carefully.

 “That's it, I’m decided.  J order some of that molding clay. Overnight shipping. I want to get this done before I change the counters”

“Yes, sir.”

He heard a faint buzz from somewhere in his room and paused all movement. Just listening. “What was that?”

“Your phone, Sir, you’ve received a text message.”

 It’s been a while since he got a text message. Pepper or Rhody usually call and leave a voicemail. No one else has the number, so it must be Bucky or Steve. He opens his phone to see the new number and smiles at the message despite its simplicity.

_Unknown Number: Hey, it’s Bucky_

_Tony: Hey_

_Bucky: Sorry If I bothered you. Just wanted to check and make sure it was the right number._

_Tony: It’s fine. I’m not doing anything._

_Bucky: Then I, as usual, have perfect timing._

_Tony: Yeah? Didn't think you'd text me this soon. Isn't there a three-day rule or something?_

_Bucky: I think I might have a different rulebook_

_Tony: Really? what’s your rulebook got in it?_

_Bucky: Oh there's a rule that says not to show your rules to anyone who doesn't already know them_

_Tony: Interesting, Lol, it's like fight club_

_Bucky: Slow down detective any more accurate guesses and my "club" might get nervous_

_Tony: My bad, my lips are sealed._

_Bucky: Got any plans for today?_

_Tony: Just some projects, nothing important, how about you?_

_Bucky: Got the night shift, other than that nothing. You should come by if you’re free._

_Tony: Because last time went so well._

_Bucky: Sorry about that._

_Tony: You don’t have to be sorry. You didn’t do anything wrong. I just don’t do too well with people._

_Bucky: You did just fine with me and Stevie._

_Tony: Barely._

_Bucky: Barely, is good enough._

Tony looks down at his phone unable to find words to type. Does he agree, go to the gym and what? Talk? Pretend to be physically fit enough to exercise and not risk hurting his weak body?

Even if he didn’t and it was all fine, there could be other people there. It’s a gym, while they might not pay much attention to him, the chances of being recognized are too great, and he doesn’t want to be seen at a gym five minutes from his apartment. There’s no way Killian won’t find him if that happens.

_Tony: Maybe next time._

Tony sets his phone down on the couch and walks over to his workbench.

“Jarvis pull up anything on prosthetics in the Stark files. Go as far back as possible. I want everything.”

“Yes, Sir.”

_

Steve contains a grimace as he walks into the gym. It always stinks to his hypersensitive nose, but this is worse. His senses are attacked with the smell of bleach and it’s overwhelming. He’s used to the smell of sweat and musk, that’s what you’d expect a gym to smell like. Not ammonia and bleach. Bucky was right, Brock back with his overbearing need to overwork everyone. Probably demanding everything be bleached despite that all the machines are wiped down and the floors sanitized every night. Apparently, that’s not good enough for the man. Steve goes to the locker room and puts his stuff away before heading out, checking his schedule for today.

He’s got three regulars, and a new name for today, all in all, it’s good. Might have a lot of free time if he wraps up quickly. Go home early and talk to Bucky before he heads out for the night shift.

“Incoming,” Bruce whispers as he passes Steve heading for the weights. Not that he needed the warning, he can smell the stench of Brock coming close over the smell of bleach.

“Rogers!” His voice is loud. “Good to see you.” Steve rolls his eyes before turning and looking at the man.

“Is it?”

“I guess not.” Brock shrugs. “Trying to start on a good foot, you know? I know everyone thinks I’m a hardass but I can be a team player.”

“Really?”

“Really.” Brock laughs. “Come on, let’s start over.” He holds his hand out to shake, and Steve can’t find it in himself to be an asshole enough not to take it. Apparently not being an asshole was a mistake. When Brock pulled away looking down at his hand. “Do my eyes deceive me or do you have a blue soulmark.”

“Uh, yeah. I met my soulmate.” He nods, feeling self-conscious. Like it was a secret that needed to be kept. Although he’s never felt that way before about his mark. He hadn’t thought about telling anybody. The only person who he immediately would have been going to tell was Bucky and they shared the same soulmate. They were friends with the others at the gym, but no one was quite as close to the two like they were to each other. With how Tony reacted, and the hesitance they both felt from the man, he wondered if Tony had anyone to tell. Family, or friends. He’d asked if Bucky and Steve had been together, but they didn't really know if he was dating. From the looks of it, Tony lived alone, but that doesn't mean he wasn’t in a relationship, or on his way to starting one.

The way he almost rejected the two at first, flinching and pulling away. Literally running, you’d think he hated the idea of a soulmate. The only time Steve had seen that kind of hesitance was once, when a woman was married to someone she wasn’t bonded to, and then met her soulmate. She would come to the gym at night and cry. Bucky and Steve would talk to her about how the divorce was going, and how she couldn’t help but feel a little guilty for ever getting married in the first place.

Was guilt what had Tony so distant at first? So timid and shy almost?

Was he hoping that Steve and Bucky had been bonded together so he wouldn’t have to bond with them?

A wave of anxiety washed over him at the prospect. The meeting seemed to go well. Demolished countertop aside, Tony reacted so well to it. But what if he was just never planning to see them again?

What if he didn’t choose them over whoever he was dating before.

Steve spends the rest of his shift thinking about it. Tony rejecting them. Him. He seems quite eager to look at Bucky’s arm which was unexpected but makes sense all things considered. Tony works with machines. Of course, he's drawn to one attached to his soulmate. Just like Steve always said. Bucky’s soulmate would be perfect for him. Able to accept Bucky in all ways. But it's not the same for Steve. He didn’t just get s new limb. He wasn't in an accident. He was sickly. Supposed to die as a child. He was changed by science. By Dr. Erskine. He can't block the sad thought that sneaks into his mind.

What if Tony was born with two soulmates because Steve was supposed to die as a child and so Tony wouldn't be left alone.

_

When Steve gets home he's still thinking about it. He had to stop and focus on his job a while, but the idea never gave up the chance to trickle back in. 

“Hey,” Bucky says from the kitchen, drinking coffee. Steve trudges over, drinking some, not caring he probably going to sleep soon. Coffee doesn’t really affect him until his third or fourth cup. “You look beat, Brock give you hell?”

“No.” Steve chuckled dryly. “He actually tried to be nice to me. Said he wanted to start over or something. I wasn’t really listening…”

“Really? Did you threaten him with bodily harm? He was such an ass yesterday.”

“Maybe Fury talked to him.”

“That or he’s just scared of you. I bet that’s what it is. Someone probably told him about the bags.”

Steve shrugs. Almost everyone in the gym gossips about why they have to keep ordering new ones. Fury already knows about Steve’s strength issue and just told him as long as it’s the bags he doesn’t give a damn how many he goes through.

“So if you didn’t get reamed by Brock why do you look so down?”

“It’s nothing.” Steve shakes his head.

“Even a blind man could see that’s a lie.” Bucky huffs, setting his cup down and crossing his arms. “What is it. Come on, talk to me.”

“Just stupid thoughts.”

“What stupid thoughts?”

“Tony… what if…”

“What if what?”

“What if he doesn’t want us… me.”

Bucky’s face softens, and his shoulders relax. “Since when are you the one to lose hope? Weren’t you just telling me a Soulmate is for life? That they will accept you because you’re made for each other? We just saw him, it went well. Don’t you think?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“You guess?” Bucky laughs. “It went great. A hiccup or two, but Tony said he wants to see us again. He gave us his number. What about that leaves you feeling rejected?”

“It’s not that- I know just a stupid fear okay? That everything is sort of going okay, but I can’t let it go. It’s all I can think about. That I don’t belong.”

“Is this about your strength?”

“Yeah, a little? Maybe? I was supposed to die, Buck. I was not strong enough to last this long. What if—what if Tony has two soulmates to make up for the fact that I was supposed to die?”

“Like what? It gave him a backup in case you withered away?”

“Yeah.”

“So what? You think I don’t deserve Tony? Because if we go by should have died… what about me? I was inches from that train taking my head off too. My leg was stuck in the track. If the ambulance had gotten there any later, I would have bled out. Not to mention all those infections and surgeries I had. How do you know you’re not the back up because I was supposed to die?”

“No Buck, that ridiculous. You and Tony are perfect for each other.”

“Really? Why?”

“You saw the way he reacted to your arm. He liked it, he wanted to touch and look at it. I could see the look in his eye. He wanted to do more but held back. There’s no machine on me. I’m crap with technology, and with people. I break everything. Who would want that burden? There’s no off switch for me. There no technical difficulty that an engineer might be able to fix. I’m stuck like this, the freak. You have a metal arm, but I’m forever changed on the inside. How could he want that?”

“So, what?” Bucky shrugs. “You can crush a phone like a coke can or punch a bag off a wall. You hear and smell things and eat like you’ve only ever known hunger. What’s so bad about that? You are learning to control it. You are, and even if you don’t- you’ve never hurt me, I’ve lived with you ten years, and you’ve never hurt me. So, what the shower shakes, and the microwave has a dent in the pizza button. Those are just things, they don’t matter.”

“Tell that to Peggy.”

“Peggy? That girl you took on a date years ago?”

“Yeah, the one who’s wrist I broke.”

 “Steve that was once, and an accident.”

“It still happened!”

Bucky thinks for a moment, trying to collect his words carefully because this is important. “I saw how loosely you hugged Tony. I don’t even think your chest’s touched. Are you- were worried about hurting him?”

“Yeah… I was.” Steve nods, eyes darting around the kitchen to hide the redness that came from the sting of tears trying to surface.

“Why do you focus on the one failure? Every day you show restraint, every day you see and work with people none of which you hurt. I understand the fear of not being in control of yourself. I understand you more than anyone else could possibly begin, but you have to see how much good you do. If you focus on the bad of course you’re going to feel bad. That’s just how it goes. You can’t start doubting yourself, and your soulmate. Your hope and unwavering will about this was the only thing keeping me sane when I thought I wouldn’t ever meet mine. Don’t lose it now, please. We both need it, and maybe so will Tony.”

“Okay,” Steve whispers looking down at his feet.

_

Tony whistles. “This is a work of art. Truly. I can’t believe my dad built this.”

“Actually Sir,” Jarvis says. “In the bottom of the first file, you will see that your father had a partner on this project. An Arnim Zola.”

Tony looks, and it does, in fact, say that. “Huh. Since when did my father share his projects? Or at least publicly claim he had help?”

“This would be a first that I’ve seen, Sir.”

“Yeah, me too.” He bites at his thumb absentminded as he looked over the designs and schematics. He’d printed everything out and he’d grabbed a twenty-four pack of sharpies he didn’t know he had and was circling areas that would need upgrading and fixing for a more modern look and easier attachment to someone. Medicine and science have evolved and changed since this was designed. Although clearly ahead of its time, it’s severely lacking now.

He begins a new sheet of paper, drawing up his own design, new parts keeping some of the old. He smiles, feeling a swell of pride for his father and this man Zola. They build something meant to last and it really did, considering Bucky’s had it twenty years. He’d love to get his hands on that arm, see what it looks like with wear and tear, what parts are still fully functional and what parts need to be replaced, tightened, or at the very least cleaned.

How to ask though is the question. Could he just text Bucky and ask him? Would that be rude? It feels rude. Tony’s not sure about boundaries really, aside from the obvious things, and his own of course. The only problem is Tony’s boundaries all fall away when he’s intrigued or excited about something, especially something like this.

“What time is it Jay?” Tony asks,

“Ten-twenty-three, Sir.”

Bucky would be at work right now and probably wouldn’t see any text from Tony until he got home in the morning. So, he would wait, ask him about it tomorrow maybe if he could work up the nerve.

_

Bucky didn’t feel right leaving Steve at home with him looking so depressed, but he didn’t really have a choice he couldn’t call off this late. Not if he didn’t want Fury to fire him. With Brock back, that was almost guaranteed, although if he worked earlier he wouldn’t be working tonight.

Thank God for small mercies.

He was throwing guest towels in the washer when he realized there’s nothing _he_ could say to abate Steve’s fear. Steve saw Bucky on even ground. No, he’s not as strong as Steve but he is stronger than the average joe. They have had each other for what feels like forever. Bucky is his normal, and his constant. This is new. Tony is Steve’s new, he’s new for both of them.

The only one who can truly reassure Steve is Tony. Which Bucky isn’t sure Tony will do considering how they don’t know each other and how Tony reacted to them at first. He sighs, throwing the dryer sheet in and closing it with an audible click and the clothes begin to tumble and spin.

There’s nothing really that he can do except try and make sure they get to know each other so they can be what the need to be with each other.

 


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Are my chapters getting shorter? No..... Stop counting! I'm sorry the updates have been super slow, I'm going to work on that, I promise! And I will bring back longer chapters! (don't hold me to that, short chapter may mean faster updates, so weigh those pros and cons!

_”Just stay still for me okay? Shouldn’t be too hard with how tired you are.” A chuckle sounded off in the room so loudly and echoing it might have been a gunshot. Tony was stuck, a black tar latching hot to his skin burning him like fire._

_It’s too hot._

_He gasps for breaths that struggle to reach his lungs. He’s suffocating._

_“Shh, it’s okay Tony, no one’s going to hurt you. I’ll protect you.”_

Tony fought and pushed, clawing at the emptiness that managed to weigh down on him. Until he opened his eyes and realized none of it was real, it had all been a dream. He let out gasping breaths, clutching his chest and turning over in bed, pushing his face into a pillow and curling his body up, making himself smaller, a last-ditch attempt to protect himself until the fear subsided.

“Sir, it is eight-twelve in the morning, you have been asleep six hours, you haven’t eaten in ten hours, you are safe and alone.”

Tony’s breaths even out, listening to the sound of Jarvis update him calms him. His hands clutch at the comforter when Jarvis adds on that he’s alone and safe. He only does that when he can see Tony on the verge of a panic attack, and it always helps.

“Turn the lights on.” He mumbles into the pillow. Jarvis understands anyway, and the lights smoothly turn on and go up in brightness. Tony’s always jumpy after nightmares, flinching at any sudden movements, even lights suddenly flicking on, or off. He feels silly, like a child begging for a nightlight, or crawling into their parent’s bed because they’re too scared to sleep alone.

Only he doesn’t have a nightlight.

Or parents to curl up with and protect him when he’s scared.

He doesn’t need that though, he has Jarvis for that. Always knowing what to do, what to say. Sometimes Tony forgets that he’s not the real Jarvis, who used to take care of him when his parents were away and would tuck him into bed, and make him hot chocolate in the middle of the night.

He remembers how Jarvis would sit in the basement with him for hours while he worked on projects. He’d stand off to the side, sometimes passing Tony tools. Talking to Jarvis about his wife and family. Jarvis' voice was always there, explaining, asking questions, giving praise. His voice was calming, and its why Tony chose Jarvis’ voice for the AI. By god, it was a great decision. He couldn’t imagine anyone else’s voice calming him now like this.

It’s probably sad he couldn’t consider his parent’s voices for it, but now those voices torment his thoughts, waking and subconscious.

Those voices he wishes he could forget and let go. Yearning for an escape from their endless torture to him. Even here, in the apartment that has become his safe haven to hide from everything, and everyone, they still echo around him, in him. Always hitting where it hurts the most.

He sits up dangling his feet over the edge of the bed, looking down at them. He doesn’t ask Jarvis to open the windows, he doesn’t want to see the world, or the beginning hints of sun and watch the birds fly by his widows. Mostly because he doesn’t want the world to be able to look back at him. Doesn’t want the heat of the sun to reach his skin, or the shadows of birds to paint his floors. He wants to forget the world exists and in turn, for it to forget him.

“I propose you eat something, Sir.”

Tony sighs, closing his eyes, rubbing a hand over his face a few times. The feeling is comforting as much as it is simple.

“I know.” He mutters. “But I’m not hungry.” That’s his code for ‘Thanks, but no’. Tony doesn’t even want to think about food, much less eat it. He just wants to sit here. In his closed room. With the shades closed, lights on, where it’s safe and alone.

Moving, walking, cooking. They all seem too great of tasks for him to handle at the moment. He pulls his feet back up onto the mattress and leans back against the headboard, focusing only on the sound him himself breathing. Staying like that for hours, the only other sounds are stomping of neighbors and Jarvis occasionally updating him that he’s safe and alone.

_

Bucky suddenly wakes up at eight am that morning, and he’s surprised. He only got home at five and ended up falling asleep at six. He’s nowhere near rested, but he feels wide awake, on edge even. His heart racing in his chest causes him to sit up and try to balance himself.

 The sound of the T.V playing low pulls his attention. He stands, making his way to the living room. Steve sits on the couch sketchbook in hand drawing.

“Hey.” Steve looks up at the sound of Bucky’s barefoot steps. “Wasn’t expecting you to be up for a few more hours.”

“Me either,” Bucky says, rubbing at his chest.

“Something wrong?” Steve asks, setting his sketchbook aside.

“I don’t know.” Bucky looks around the room. “I just have this weird feeling, in my chest.”

“Is it your heart?” Steve asks, a twinge of concern.

“No.” Bucky shakes his head. “It’s not really physical. It’s like- it’s like anxiety?”

“Oh uh… how can I help?”

“I don’t think you can.” Bucky presses the hand to his chest harder. “It’s not me.” He says. “I’m not anxious.”

“What?”

“It’s weird to say almost but… I think it’s Tony.”

Steve’s eyes go wide. “Really? What makes you think that?”

“My heart it’s beating fast, and I feel like every inch of me is vibrating. But I’m not actually scared, or worried. It’s like being scared because someone near you is clearly scared.”

“Sympathetic fear?”

“Yeah.” Bucky nods. “I think somethings wrong with Tony.”

“Well, what are you going to do?”

“What can I do?”

“Call him? See if he’s okay?”

_

“Sir, you’ve got an incoming call. Shall I forward it to voicemail?”

“Is it Pepper or Rhody?” he asks. Rhody actually has a knack for talking Tony down from a panic attack, Pepper tends to absorb nearby panic and then throw it back amplified.

“It’s Bucky Sir.”

Tony looks up in surprise. “What? Why’s he calling?”

“I don’t know, Sir.”

“I-” Tony leans up and compulsively runs a hand through his hair. “Uh, answer it.” He clears his throat just before Javis connects. “Hello?” Tony asks, head turned up to the ceiling where the speakers and microphones, he’d probably feel more comfortable talking into his phone, but his hands feel weak and sweaty, so his phone would probably fall out of his hands.

“Hey, Tony, it’s Bucky.” Comes the uncertain voice over the speakers. Tony resists the urge to say I know since he has caller ID and knows what Bucky’s voice sounds like. It's the uncertainness that stops Tony from doing so. “Are uh- are you all right?”

“What?” Tony pauses, looking down at his sheets, somehow feeling embarrassed or exposed. Why would Bucky ask something like that? Why would he even call this early?

Bucky sighs heavily over the phone. “I’m sorry for calling out of nowhere, I didn’t even know if you were up… I just had a weird feeling.”

Tony doesn’t know what to say to that. What does Bucky’s weird feelings have to do with him? But then there’s something else he remembers, something Killian told him.

_”A soul bond is very special. Sometimes your soulmate can feel what you feel at a great distance. You can’t control it, and it’s hard for them to ignore. Do you really want to inflict what you feel onto someone else with how unstable your mind is?”_

Another wave of fear coursed through Tony. His nightmare, his fear, it could have flowed into Bucky somehow. What should he do? How does he stop it?

“I um- I’m fine.” Except Tony’s not fine, he hasn’t been fine for years. His mind is a prison and his emotions are unpredictable and uncontrollable. He hates that he has to live with it, but the idea of making Steve or Bucky live with it? No, that’s horrible.

This is why he never wanted soulmates.

“Are you sure?”

Tony closes his eyes, dropping his head into his hands and breathes, he needs to make himself feel okay, or at the very least pretend so well that Bucky will stop feeling his inner panic.

“Yeah.” He says, not moving his hands from his face. Just block out the world and make himself feel safe. That should work.

“Okay.” Tony can hear the hesitance in Bucky’s voice. Not knowing how to move forward, probably not believing Tony’s words. Why should he when he’s experiencing strong emotions telling him otherwise. Yet they don’t all know each other well enough to call him out on it. Bucky is trying to find the balance or the grey area where they all fit. Tony should probably say goodbye and hang up, but he doesn’t want to hang up, as much as he doesn’t want to be a bother, he wants comfort, he wants someone other than Jarvis to tell him he’s all right. He doesn’t want to be alone, but with someone who he can trust to protect him.

And who can he trust if not his own soulmates?

“No.” Tony whispers, apparently loud enough for the microphone to register it.

“What?” Bucky asks.

“I’m not okay.” Tony says, voice barely louder than before. But Bucky catches it all the same.

“How can I help?” Bucky asks.

“I don’t know.”

_

They talk for hours. Or at least, Bucky talks for hours. Mostly just complaining about Brock, because that helped fill the time. Taking Tony’s mind off the dream. Not that Bucky knew what exactly he was helping take Tony’s mind off of.

After declining Bucky’s offer to come over, Bucky settled on just staying on the phone, talking until Tony felt better. It was strange feeling a panic inside him dissipate when it wasn’t originally his in the first place. Tony’s reluctance to tell him why he was feeling that way didn’t bother him in the slightest, he was just happy to help any small way Tony would let him.

Occasionally Tony would laugh or make tiny comments on things Bucky mentioned or complained about. When the comments slowly stopped coming Bucky listened carefully and could hear the faint sound of snoring. He smiled, to himself, listening for a few seconds more before whispering goodnight and hanging up.

Steve had been sitting on the floor across from Bucky in the hallway the whole time, unable to focus on anything else until this was all resolved.

“He fell asleep.” Bucky whispered, holding his phone in his hand. It was overheated in his hand. The call having been going for almost three hours, the battery was low and screen smudged from the oil of his face.

“That means he was relaxed? He felt better?”

“Yeah.” Bucky nodded confidently, pressing a hand to his chest and taking a deep breath. “I don’t the panic anymore.”

A wave of emotions passed over Steve’s face, some Bucky couldn’t read, but he could guess. The relief was obvious, and the confusion there visible. But there was something else.

“What is it?”

Steve met Bucky’s eyes a moment before looking away. He hated this feeling, hated admitting to feeling it, even to himself deep inside his mind. Twinges of jealousy.

“Why didn’t I feel it?” He asks eventually. Bucky tsks, shrugging.

“I don’t know. Maybe you did.”

“I think I’d know if I was feeling deep amounts of anxiety and fear.”

“Would you?” Bucky asks standing, “You feel it all the time. Always scared of breaking something or pushing too hard. Maybe you’ve just grown numb to it. Or maybe it’s not that at all. Maybe you’re so used to relying on your enhanced senses you couldn’t detect this one. Maybe I wouldn’t have had I already been awake and concentrated.”

Steve stands too. Not yet feeling the jealousy and insecurities wash away. “You talked to him more. Yesterday, you texted him.”

“Yeah, and?”

“What if you’re more connected to him than I am?”

“is that even possible?”

“I don’t know? Feel’s like it might be.”

“Steve.” Bucky shakes his head. “Maybe it only affects one of us at a time. It’d be kind of problematic if all three of us felt anxiety or fear at the same time. One of us has got to be sane and strong.”

“Will it always be like that? Always you?”

“You’re asking the wrong guy.” Bucky shrugs. “I’m just grasping at straws. I don’t know how any of this works. But come on. It’s a new bond, we barely know each other. You have to give it time. I doubt texting him a little bit yesterday would have given me that much more of a connection to him than you. If it did then you know what you need to do to get more connected. You have his number text him.”

“Nah, I wouldn’t know what to say, besides, he’s asleep.”

“Then you’ve got until he wakes up to figure something out Stevie. Don’t get so down about it. This was weird, strange and sudden. Wait ‘till we get some balance and real connection before you start freaking out on me.”

“Yeah.” Steve nods, looking down at his feet, ashamed at being so jealous of such a small thing.

“I get it though,” Bucky says after a moment. “I wish he was here right now, sleeping on our batty old couch, or at least, I was there with him. I feel like I want to protect him or something. At the very least, I just want to smell him again. He smells nice.” Bucky smiles. Steve nods.

Tony’s entire apartment had smelled like him. Brief moments of that clean air before the fire started registered in his mind. When they came back the next day the smell of smoke mostly cleared but was there, slightly clouding the smell. The smell of various oils and metals mixed well with Tony’s scent, years of working with them and it’s begun to have a permeant layer on the man. But right alongside it was the raw smell of Tony.

Steve couldn’t describe it if he was at gunpoint. It was just Tony. Layered with different parts, but all combined was his soulmate, and he as well had grown to miss that smell. He wondered if Tony had missed their smell at all or craved for them as they did him.

Surely, he didn’t have Steve’s sense of smell, and he hadn’t hugged long enough for Tony to get a good whiff. Bucky sure had thought. Unashamed at his obvious deep inhales and tight embrace. How unafraid Bucky was to hold Tony in his arms, not wanting to let go.

Steve silently mourned for that loss. Wanting to pull Tony in tight and never let go. But with his strength, he’d brake Tony, just as he broke everything else.

“That’s what you can do.” Bucky smiles. Steve snaps back to attention confused.

“Do what?”

“Text him, set up our next date. We could go out. Get dinner, or see that new movie, what was it called? Something with a player? I don’t know, but if you can’t think of something to talk to him about, then you can do that.”

“Buck, I can’t just-”

“Can’t just what?” Bucky cuts him off, killing the line of excuses before they had a chance to fall out of Steve’s mouth. “Stop being a punk and just do it.” He tells him. “I’m going back to sleep.”

Steve stands there a few minutes wondering what exactly he’s supposed to say to Tony. Just send him a text out of nowhere about a date when he just was very not okay on the phone with Bucky for three hours. He lets out a deep breath and grabs his phone, carefully typing out a message to Tony and sending it.

_

Tony blinks awake slowly. The arm he’s resting his head on feels numb and his shoulders stiff and sore. He stretches slowly, starting with his fingers and moving onto the rest of the arm as he moves it out from under him, grimacing at the drag of drool.

“Good afternoon sir, it is one-twelve in the afternoon. You’ve slept two hours and have not eaten for fifteen hours.” Jarvis’ voice comes down, fully pulling Tony out of his sleep.

Tony groans rolling onto his back. Trying to decide if eating is even worth it at this point when Jarvis adds.

“Also, you’re modeling clay has arrived.” 

That gets Tony pushing up out of bed, he quickly pulls the door open grabbing the brown box where it’s set off to the side and he brings it in, doors click locked by Jarvis, as Tony sets it down on the unusable counter, He decides he’ll eat while it dries as he begins to open the package.

While he cooks Jarvis alert him to a text he’d received from Steve while he was asleep, and he tells Jarvis to read it aloud. He can’t help but smile at how it starts.

“Hey, Tony, it’s Steve.”


	7. Chapter 7

Dinner. That’s what Steve had asked if Tony would like to do. Go out for dinner. Somewhere public he’s assuming when it comes out the ‘out’ part of the message. Tony sighs, stabbing his fork aimlessly into the eggs on his plate, leaning his head against the cool steel of the fridge where he sits on the floor in front of it. Something about the steady buzz coming from it and the feeling of it rumble against this back calms him.

He looks down at his phone, it lays open on the floor in front of him, keyboard up and indicator blinking as if telling him to just say something.

But he doesn’t want to say something. Because he’s going to say no, and he doesn’t want to say no. But he has to say no. Going out in public isn’t an option. Especially not for something like getting food. The number of strangers you pass and see while doing something like that is too great.

You have all the other customers, the waiters, and waitresses, anyone you pass on the way there. Anyone of those people could recognize him, and that’s the end of it. End of his six months of freedom. He can’t go back, he won’t.

So, we come back to the phone. What does his say? 

He wants to see them. That much he knows. But he just can’t go out. He can't.

Maybe… maybe he could just come up with something else. Another plan, that didn’t involve leaving… He looked around the apartment and smiled. Reaching for his phone, he quickly tapped out a message.

Tony: Actually, I was thinking about having you guys come over to watch a movie.

Steve replies almost immediately as if he was waiting by the phone.

Steve: Oh yeah, when?

Tony: Whenever the two of you are free

Steve: Okay, I’ll talk to Bucky

Tony: Okay

Tony continued to eat his eggs, phone resting on his knee he felt renewed with purpose, anxious purpose, but with a flutter of something in his chest. For once he let himself think this might be alright. He imagined it. Him, Bucky, Steve, all coexisting, happy, here in this lonely apartment. A smile ghosts on his face at the thought.

_

The clock ticked far on the wall, and Killian glared at it. Wondering what the point was to have a clock that ticks when there are plenty of digital ones about. Even in this very room. It was unnecessary, and he would have to get someone to take it down.

He turned his eyes from the distracting object and sighed at the small rectangular photo before him. His finger edges the paper sharp corner and he likes the glossy feel of the front. A dash of light glimmered off it. He liked this photo the best of all the ones in his very thick folder. Tony’s gaze was turned right to the photographer’s lenses, making his eyes follow whoever was holding the photo.

He liked the feeling of Tony’s eyes on him. The man hardly did that those last few months before he disappeared.  Killian shook his head. Irritated at his own impatience. It was foolish to jump so far so fast in those few days. Not after he’d been working on Tony for years. It just felt right at the time, and Tony seemed to be ready. He was broken up with Pepper, the night terrors coming back. Maybe the factors were set too high, he muses, pursing his lips in thought.

It could be that he overcompensated on drama, he picked a too stressed situation and made it worse. Because Tony ran. Which wasn’t new. Tony always ran in some form or another. Ran back into his mind, ran from the press, ran from being himself. It was a deep hate buried within the heart of Tony’s chest, and it beat poison into his veins along with blood. Hateful words of doubt and shame.

But he never ran from Killian.

“Six months.” Killian sighed to himself, looking at the calendar sat up on his desk. They haven’t been apart any duration longer than two months ever since Tony’s parents died. They had sessions once a week. Every Friday like clockwork. Tony only ever missed because of business trips and company parties he needed to attend.

Six months was far too long.

And without a peep from Tony. No sign of him in the media, he’s not going to company meetings. Nothing. Killian would almost be worried he was dead if he didn’t know for a fact Pepper was in contact with him. He overheard her end of a phone call to him once. He’d asked her multiple times to convince Tony to come back, and she said she would try, but has yielded no results.

A vacation. She had told him. That Tony said he needed a vacation and he didn’t know when he’d be back. No one cared. Tony kept sending in designs from wherever and he’s an adult.

That’s what everyone kept repeating.

_Tony’s an adult he’ll come back when he’s ready._

_He can handle himself._

_He’s getting his job done why stop him?_

_The board meetings are just a formality, no one wants to go to them, Peppers doing great in his place._

Killian twisted the cap of his pen and sighed frustrated thinking about them all again. Tony wasn’t taking his medication, he wasn’t here, he wasn’t in reach. All they ever spoke about was what Tony needed, and they were all wrong. Tony _needs_ Killian and Killian needs Tony.

No one gets it. They’ll never understand.

Tony understood. Or at the very least he was starting to.

Ten years.

Ten wonderful years Killian had spent getting to know Tony, breaking down those walls, getting into his mind, earning his trust. The connection was real, it still is. Ten years of glorious progress, and it’s all gone just because Killian moved too quickly. He got impatient.

He wouldn’t let it happen again.

He would find Tony, and everything would be alright.

Dropping the pen, he reached for the phone and dialed Pepper’s number.

_

“Pepper, it’s Killian again.” The woman over the intercom informs as the phone blinks with an incoming call.

She barely suppressed a sigh as she reached for the phone.

“Killian, hello.” She greets, placing a fake smile on her face despite the fact he can’t see her.

“Pepper, I’m sorry if I caught you at a bad time, I was just hoping to check and see if you had an update on Tony.”

“I know.” She says softly, trying to collect her words. “I’m sorry to say, nothing has changed. Tony isn’t back, and he isn’t interested in anyone knowing where he is. Myself and Rhody included.”

“He’s not taking his medication Pepper; the withdrawals alone form not taking them are concerning enough. Not to mention why he needed them in the first place. I would just feel better if he was taking them again. Can you just… can you just ask him to start them again, his prescription is good, he can get a refill anywhere, just show his ID at the counter.”

Pepper nods as Killian speaks. “I will tell him, okay? Next time he takes my call, I will tell him.”

“Thank you.” He says. “And Pepper?”

“Yes?”

“Can you tell him I miss him?”

She relaxes at that, face expression softening. “I will.”

_

Tony shifted from foot to foot. “I feel like I should be doing something.” He says up to the ceiling. But winces as he’s blinded by the light right above him. The sun’s been down for over an hour and the apartment seems darker than it’s ever been. Which he knows isn’t true. He’s spent many nights in the dark, comforted by it. He’s worked in it. But he can’t help but feeling it’s not good enough. That he’s not good enough.

The apartment’s clean, the movie rented, Steve and Bucky were handling the snacks. So, all that was left for him to do was wait. He sucked at waiting. Constantly on the edge, waiting for them to arrive. His phone vibrates in his pocket, and he nearly jumps out of his skin, not used to having it on him so often.

He pulls it out quickly, a very small part of him hopes they cancel so he can just lay down and relax, do this again some other day. He’s surprised to see that it’s a message from Pepper.

Pepper: Tony call me, I’d rather not leave you another long voice message, you’re giving me a complex.

He sighs down at his phone if she’s pushing for an actual conversation its not just another update about SI, she wants to talk about something. Something he doesn’t want to talk about, because he doesn’t want to talk about anything much these days. He wonders if she’ll ask him to come home.

The knock at the door offers him an escape from thinking about it. He pulls the door open and can’t help the smile on his face when he sees them both carrying two bags each.

“You know it’s just the one movie, right?”

“Yeah, but we didn’t know what you liked.” Steve shrugged, looking sheepish.

“And Stevie can eat all of this by himself if he wanted to. You’ll be lucky if you get any of it.”

Tony steps to the side and allows them in. They take their shoes off by the door and pass to the living room and set their things down on the coffee table. Tony let himself linger just a moment, looking at the two sets of shoes. They hadn’t done that last time. They hadn’t gotten comfortable.

Shoes aren’t a direct link to being comfortable, but somehow it changes things, somehow, it’s important. They took their shoes off because they intend to stay, even if only for a movie. They’re going to stay, and Tony likes that idea.

He turns to them and suddenly it felt like his living room was too small. Not enough options for seating as his two soulmates stood there, once again waiting for him to take the lead.

“Let me put the popcorn in the microwave.”

“Oh yeah.” Bucky says, reaching into the bag, and pull out the popcorn handing it over. He pulls off the plastic wrapping and throws the bag into the microwave, Jarvis starts the machine up for him and he turns around to the bodybuilders taking up his entryway with their broad shoulders. He doesn’t exactly want to spend the next three minutes in silence save for the sound of popping, so he decides to take the opportunity.

“So, uh, Bucky.” He starts stepping forward, “I was wondering if you’d be okay with me taking a look at your arm sometime?”

“My metal arm?” He asks, surprises heavy in his voice.

Tony smiles. “While I’m sure the flesh one is just as amazing, yes, the metal one. I just wanted to maybe look over it, take a peek inside. It’s totally okay if you’re uncomfortable with it, I won’t ask again, I promise.”

“You can fix it?” Steve asks,

“It’s broken?”

Bucky shrugs. “It acts up.”

“In what way?”

Bucky hesitates so Steve takes over for him.

“Sometimes it just locks up, he can’t move it, and other times it gives him pain.”

“Is it recurring or constant? What kind of pain is it? Is it in a certain spot? Can you feel it in the arm, or is it your shoulder?” Tony stops himself with a sigh. “I’m getting ahead of myself. If I take a look I can probably figure out what’s wrong. But not tonight, unless it hurts and you need me to.”

Bucky shakes his head. “Nope, it’s fine tonight.”

Right on cue the microwave dings. Popcorn in hand, they all got to the living room. Bringing the next problem at hand: Where to sit.

Suddenly the living room felt too small like there weren’t enough options.

He could choose the loveseat, but it was too small for the three of them, and he’d either be alone or one of them would try to sit with him, leaving the other out. If he sat in the recliner, then he’d be the one left out. Which he isn’t sure if that’s what he wants or not just yet. But if he sits on the couch, then they’ll all three fits.

It seems like the logical option. No one left out. It’s normal to share a seat with your soulmates, right? Or even friends. No point for all that distance. Not to mention he already has Bucky and Steve tiptoeing around him. He’s run from them, and Bucky literally felt his fear. That’s worse than just witnessing a panic attack. He’d experienced it.

Tony made the decision to just do it, and if it felt wrong, then he could just move later.  He dropped down in the middle of the couch, looking up at the two of them expectantly, and they both moved into action, Bucky sitting on his left side, Steve on his right.

He holds his breath for a moment as he feels momentarily boxed in. He shifts, pushing further back into the couch instead of getting up like his panic is telling him to do. Eventually, he settles where he is, normally he’d be fully spread out on the couch watching a movie, even with Rhody or Pepper. He’d just drape himself across them.

God, he used to be so comfortable with touch.

“Okay, Jarvis hit it.”

The two bodybuilders look up in surprise as the tv turns on and the lights in the room dim.

“Who is Jarvis?” Bucky asks, and Tony thinks over his response. He hadn’t thought about this before. They may not know much about Stark industries, but Tony is the only person with an AI that he built named Jarvis.

“Uh… He’s like Siri.” He shrugs.

“Oh, it’s a computer thing?”

“Yup,” Tony says taking a handful of popcorn and eating it slowly, so they would hopefully not expect him to answer more questions. The movie beings to play and Tony has a hard time focusing on it and not the two heat radiators next to him. Was it normal for someone to radiate such heat? He could feel a larger amount coming from Steve’s side which should say something if he can feel such a real difference.

He also can’t keep himself from watching as their hands keep reaching over him, taking popcorn from the bag in his lap.

Suddenly the music in the movie changes to something fast paced and urgent, Tony’s eyes are drawn to the screen just in time to see the character on screen get snatched away by a large monstrous looking beast.

“Oh, this is a scary movie.” Tony realizes aloud.

“Yeah, you didn’t know that?”

“You picked it.” Bucky adds on before Tony can say no, and he realizes that yeah, he brought this up like he already planned it, and wanted to see this movie.

“I did.” He lies. “I just wanted to make sure you two knew.”

Steve and Bucky share a look over Tony’s head, both conveying how much they didn’t believe him without words.

_

The rest of the movie went on, and Tony slowly tried to sink himself more into the couch and away from the TV as much as possible. At some point he managed to actually push himself behind Steve, his face was half pressed into Steve’s shoulder blocking part of his view to the TV which was actually helping to keep him calm. His legs have come up from the floor and his toes are tucked under Bucky’s thigh for warmth and it makes him feel safe. There’s a throw blanket covering him, and he feels like a little kid.

The movie isn’t that scary, but the lights are out, and that fake plant in the corner is starting to look like a monster watching him. He’s too scared to look directly at it but too scared to look away, and it doesn’t help when the screen flashes bright and dark making the figure look like it’s breathing. He clutches Steve’s arm as he looks at it over the man’s shoulder. Breathing heavily into the tight space between Steve and the couch, causing the already strangely warm man to feel like a furnace. There’s a light trail of beaded sweat dotting his neck.

When the movie eventually ends, Jarvis brings the lights back on without prompting, and Tony’s eyes are drawn to double check that in the corner really sits a fake plant.

With the lights on, he realizes just how much he’s migrated behind Steve and extracts himself muttering a quiet apology.

Steve just smiles and shakes his head. “It’s fine.”

Tony nods looking down at the coffee table, candy wrappers, and the now empty bowl of popcorn rest there, and he releases this is it, the end of the night.

He doesn’t want them to leave.

The knowledge hits him like a baseball bat to the gut. He freezes, not sure of what to do, and the room seems to freeze with him. It’s a game of chicken, he comes to understand, once any of them speak the moment will be over, they will all have to acknowledge it’s time to go, and they’ll have to leave.

He won’t ask them to stay, he can’t, he’s not ready for that, as much as he realizes he wants them around more. There’s a difference between wanting them to stay another hour or so and spending the night, which they may take it like that considering how late it is.

“So uh, you want to look at my arm?” Bucky’s voice breaks the silence, and Tony is happy it’s not just to say goodbye.

“Yeah.” He nods. “I just wanted to see how it worked, and so on. But if something’s wrong I can totally check it out and see what I could do.”

“And you can? Fix this sort of thing, I mean.”

“Uh, if it’s something to do with the arm itself yes. If it’s a health or body issue, then probably not. But if that’s the case there are some people I can put you in touch with.” Tony’s mind goes to Bruce, it’s been a few years since they’ve spoken, but he’s sure Bruce would love to crawl out of any hole he managed to dig himself into to work on this.

“I have a day off this weekend if you want to do it then.” Bucky says.

Tony nods. “Works for me.”

There are a few more moments of easy silence after that, and Tony feels the way Steve stiffens slightly, then stands.

“This was fun.”

It’s better than a ‘we have to go’ Tony supposes, so he’ll take what he can get. He and Bucky stood and they said their goodbyes, repeating with quick shy hugs again.

_

Pepper almost ignored her phone vibrating in her pocket as she clicked the button for the elevator. She was done with investors for the day, and lunch hadn’t even come around yet. She took a deep breath and pressed the elevator again, letting her frustration out on that silver little button. Only after the third vibration did she even bother digging into her purse to check it.

Her eyes widened in surprise to see it was Tony’s contact. She quickly answered once her senses came to her.

“Tony?” She said, voice hopeful but wary, a part of her worried it was an accident, or if he’d lose his nerve and hang up suddenly. Thankfully he didn’t.

“Hey Pepper, How’s it going?” He said, voice sounding, easy but thin. That didn’t stop the smile from bursting on her face.

“Oh my- I’ve missed the sound of your voice.” She breathes out, stepping into the elevator as the doors pull open. Not bothering to answer the question. Tony chuckled on the other end as she pressed for her floor then leaned back against the wall. “You sound a little different.” She says.

“Yeah?” He asks, “It’s probably all the clean air I’ve been breathing. Not as much oil or smoke here.”

“And where is ‘here’ exactly?”

“It’s a great place called, Noneya, capital named business.”

She rolled her eyes. “Fine, it doesn’t matter where you are, just the fact that you aren’t here. When does this vacation end Tony? It’s been six months. I miss you.”

The deep breath he takes is caught by the receiver and is followed by a short silence. “I miss you too Pepper, you and Rhody. But I’m-” He’s about to say he’s happy here. In his apartment. Alone. But he isn’t. He hasn’t been happy for a long time. “I’m safe here.” He says instead because that at the very least is true.

“Safe? As opposed to what when you’re here?”

“I can’t explain it really Pepper, okay? I just… I’m in a good place and I don’t want to leave, not yet, I’m not ready yet.” Tony’s not exactly sure he will ever be.

There’s a long silence between them. Each second weights down on Tony like a sack of bricks.

“I wish I knew what it is you are waiting to be ready for.”

“I’ll tell you one day.” He promises. “Just not today.”

“Okay.” She settles with that for now. She’s heard his voice and can accept small victory’s, one day at a time. Walking into her office now she’s suddenly reminded of Killian's phone call. “Oh. While I have you, I wanted you to know, Killian called me, he wanted me to ask you that you take your medication. He’s really worried about you, and he at the very least wants you to not get off track any more than you already are.”

“Killian called and told you this?” He asked, his heart suddenly sped up and he couldn’t.

“Yeah.” She sighs, sitting down at her desk. “He calls at least once a week asking for updates on you. Except I can never give him information because I don’t know anything.”

 _That’s the point._ Tony thinks to himself. Suddenly he’s regretting calling her. He hadn’t realized Killian would be calling Pepper. God, once a week for six months? A part of Tony had hoped that Killian would give up, lose interest, get tired of waiting around. But if he’s continuing to be this persistent Tony doesn’t see him giving up anytime soon.

“I uh- I don’t have any more of my pills.” He sighs, rubbing a hand over his face, he tries to calm himself. Mentally repeating that he’s safe and alone.

“Yeah, he said that you have an open prescription, any pharmacy should have it stocked, just show your ID and you can get a refill.”

That’s not going to happen. Tony already knows this trick. He show’s his ID and Killian gets an instant alert for which pharmacy Tony went to, and that makes him one step closer to finding him.

“Um, okay, sure.” He lies. “I’ll go when I can.”

“Thank you.” She smiles, but it quickly drops when she checks the time. “Oh Tony, I have to go, I’ve got a meeting.”

“Okay, it was nice catching up.”

She stands gathering her papers before she stops still. “You knew I had a meeting, you purposely called me right before my meeting, didn’t you?”

Tony smiles on the other end and she can practically hear it in his voice. “Bye Pepper, it was nice talking to you. Don’t be late, give Rhody my love!” He hangs up laughing before she gets a chance to respond. He smiles down at his phone, and the weight of it suddenly seems too much. The distance between them too far.

He misses her, he misses his some, everything, and he can’t go back. He’s too scared to go back. He rubs his hands over his face as he lies back on the couch. Sometimes the fear turns into a bout of rage when he’s reminded of everything he can’t have, because of Killian and his stupid face. He sighs frustrated and tosses his phone onto the coffee table wondering how exactly he’s ever going to get his life back.

 


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mostly Tony and Bucky in this, I plan for it to mostly be Steve and Tony in the next chapter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like everyone is so tired of these dialogue heavy chapters, I'm sorry, I resort to lots of dialogue when I have writers block. Sorry this took so long to update! 
> 
> I was hoping to add more before I posted but I figured I'd get something up here sooner rather than make it wait another week or two just to double the size of the chapter. Idk, if you prefer for me to make the chapters longer than I can do that, or I can keep them coming in short burts

The week passed at a snail’s pace, which left Tony feeling bored, but also appreciative. Nothing happened, good or bad. Steve and Bucky had back to back shifts, and other things that kept them too busy to come over or try to make plans. They texted at least once a day with something, and Tony was happy for those small messages shared between them.

He’d also taken to apologetically ignoring Pepper. While it wasn’t exactly a big step considering he wasn’t speaking to her much on the phone, he used to reply to her voicemails with messages. Something he hasn’t done all week. He couldn’t, whenever he opened his phone, whenever he began to think about what he would send, he would think about Kilian, his constant pursuit of any and all information on Tony.

He knows Pepper would never put him in harm’s way or go directly against his wishes to remain where he is, but she doesn’t even know that Killian is what he’s hiding from. Now he feels the need to censor everything he might say to Pepper, he doesn’t want to accidentally give any hints to his location, he needs to be more careful now, you know, on top of all the other things he’s already doing.

The bowl of cereal on the table had been neglected and grew far too soggy for consumption in his inner musings, Tony sighed down at it once he realized. He’s been looking at everything Jarvis could find about this project Arnim and Howard had been working on.

By now the designs and inner workings of that arm were imprinted in his brain. He looked at the still cracked countertop thinking about how he should have called the contractor days ago when he realizes something.

“None of the lines from Bucky’s hand are visible.” It’s true, even in the clay model that he currently has sitting in the oven doesn’t have them.

“Of course, they wouldn’t.” Jarvis comments.

“Why do you say that?” Tony can easily make out the impression of fingers, the clay model looks exactly like a perfect fist, it doesn’t seem far off to expect the lines to be visible.

“Bucky didn’t punch the counter.”

“What?” There’s a knock on the door and cuts off any reply Jarvis could have had. “Is it four already?” Tony asked.  

“Yes Sir, Bucky is right on time.”

Tony dumps the bowl of cereal into the sink and pulls the door open.

“Hey.” Bucky says a smile on his face is clear, mixed with nervousness and excitement, his hands are tucked into his black jacket and his hair a little damp, a few strands sticking to his face. It was drizzling lightly out there all afternoon, giving the outside a misty look and Bucky a light sheen to his skin.

“Come in.” Tony steps to the side making room, mirroring the smile Bucky gives and closes the door behind him as Bucky takes off his shoes.

“So uh, how do you want to do this?” Bucky asks looking around the living room like he hasn’t already seen it a few times. Tony guesses he must be nervous, or at least unsure of what he’s supposed to do. He did say he’s never had anything done to it, by himself or others. But that was okay because if there was anything Tony wasn’t nervous about it was technology.

“You are going to sit on my very amazing comfortable work chair here.” He pulls it out from the desk and sits it about a foot away while and then grabs a stool from the kitchen island and sets it between the chair and the desk so he has access to all his tools. “But first you are going to have to take off your shirt, I need to see the whole arm and shoulder.”

Bucky nods and then he’s pulling the shirt up over his head. Tony had already mentally prepared himself for the abs, and the pecks, and just the amazing sculpture that is Bucky, but he didn’t think about the scars. He knew there would be some, obviously with an injury like Bucky had, there was a description of it in the notes among the files he found. Somehow, he still found himself shocked at the sight, they spread out over his left peck from the shoulder, which was mostly metal, but it looked painful.

His gaze lingered a little too long because Buck shifted uncomfortably.

“Sorry, it’s a little gnarly.”

“No.” Tony quickly shakes his head. “Sorry, I’m an idiot, I was preparing myself for everything else I completely spaced on scars, not that scars even bother me, I have a bunch of my own right here.” He taps on his chest right through his shirt, and it’s not a lie. He’s got a whole bundle of them right there. From the accident and the four surgeries that followed in the years to come trying to repair the damage. He's got others too all over, some accidents in the lab, others he doesn't remember at all, drunken nights that are forever lost to his memory, only light scars to have a mark of proof anything ever happened. “I didn’t mean to stare.” He mutters apologetically, quickly scanning his work desk to give himself a moment to stop making an ass of himself before taking a breath and turning back. “So, explain what exactly is wrong with the arm.”

Bucky thinks for a moment. “It sometimes locks up, won’t move or anythin’, other times its just dead weight, and sometimes there’s a sharp pain, gives me headaches.”

“Sharp pain where?”

“Inside. Or at least I think it is? It’s not the phantom limb pains, those feel different. This is like a stab or a shock.”

Tony nods, looking back at the sketch of the arm for a moment. “Where in the arm, lower by your hand and wrist. Or middle, in the elbow? Or up top by the shoulder?”

“Shoulder.”

“Okay, we can check out the top.” Tony nods, turning back, making a few notes on the sketch behind him. “How often does the pain happen?”

“I’m not sure, it’s really random, but it only ever happens after I’ve been movin’ the arm a lot.”

“That could be a couple of things. Let’s look inside and see what we got.” When Tony reaches for the arm Bucky flinches, just a little bit, small enough that Tony might have missed it if he blinked. So, he stopped, hesitating. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah- I just- I never let anyone touch it besides Steve.”

“Would you like to wait until Steve has an off day too? I could easily just tell him what do to, it’s not all that hard.” A bit of an oversimplification of what exactly it takes to handle everything correctly, but it's not rocket science, it would be fine having Steve be his hands.

“No, no, I’m fine I just… is it going to hurt? You taking it apart?”

“No.” Tony shakes his head. “It shouldn’t at all. These panels up here should have no sensory receptors in the parts that detach, if you do feel something then that may be what’s wrong actually, but I doubt that.”

“I don’t normally feel anything in the arm but this pain."

“Not even in the hand?”

“No.”

Tony hums, nodding, looking the arm over.   

“What?”  

Tony smiles, “I can’t give you answers off of blind assumptions, I need to get in there and take a look. It’s okay if you want to wait for another day. I just don’t want to make any statements or guesses until I know what I’m working with.”

“This is fine.” He takes a deep breath. Honestly, Bucky had been excited that he’d have this time alone with Tony, which makes him feel a little guilty about it, in hindsight considering Steve’s already feeling like they have a stronger connection. An insecurity Bucky could see himself having if the situation were flipped. But that doesn’t stop him from wanting what he wants, and that’s to get to know his soulmate and share time with him. Also, he’s sure Steve would understand, this isn’t a date, it’s getting his arm fixed, which Steve has been hounding him about for months. Most of all he doesn’t want to make Tony think he’s uncomfortable being touched because that is _so_ not the case.

Tony slowly lays his hand on the metal shoulder, finger tracing the grooves. “Interesting thing about this arm- these panels can pop right out and back in. It was designed like that for easy maintenance. Cleaning, repairing, upgrading, the works. Also, they are made with a simple design, so I could easily make you some new ones. On the sides of each panel are two little connectors, they control latching and the movements that help the arm bend and move. They don’t need to be detached or even touched at all to look inside and fix things. Unless they are the problem that is- which I doubt.”

Tony goes on to tell him about every single piece that went into making the arm as he slowly and methodically pops out the silver metal panels that make up the outer shell of the shoulder. He looks over the inner workings of the arm with a careful eye, suppressing his excitement and intrigue for focus on rooting out the cause of the problem.

The room is well lit, and the windows are pulled open, but with the rainy weather, it's not as bright as Tony would like it. His lab had much better lighting, he missed it now more than ever. For now, he makes do with a pen flashlight. The notes and sketches were accurate, thank god, he wasn’t actually going into this blind. But he does notice some things seem out of place, a lot of the inner workings are shifted or hanging loosely. Which isn’t all that surprising considering how long Bucky has had the arm, and how he uses it constantly. The insides of the panels have some rough and jagged edges. Nothing major, but Tony would feel better replacing them than to let them sit any longer.

Still, it’s not important considering a little rust couldn’t be causing Bucky pain.

“Okay, I’m just going to move some things around.” Tony says, using the pen light to move a few pieces and that’s when he spots it. “Ope, someone’s not where they are supposed to be.” He whispers.

A purple frayed wire hanging loose and exposed, tangled with the others. He had to begin moving the others out of the way to see where it was supposed to connect to. Once he saw the part that it snapped from he grabbed his tweezers, pulling the broken bit from the socket, and then stripped the wire, cutting the frayed end and using the now even slightly shorter cord, he pushed it back into the correct socket, the moment it was in Bucky jerked up, scaring Tony causing him to flinch.

“What? Did it hurt?” Tony asked hands up and free from the area.

“No.” Bucky shook his head, looking down at his arm, eyes wide. “I- it felt warm.”

“Warm? The inside?”

“No- you. Your hand. It felt warm. I could feel it.”

“Yeah? Is that not normal? The arm should be able to feel. Its written here.” Tony looks back to the table trying to find the page with the sensors information on it. But a hand on his arm stops him.  He looks back to see Bucky's expression of wonder and amazement looking down at where the metal hand grips Tony's forearm.

“I've never been able to feel.” Bucky whispers as if to himself. The grip on Tony’s arm loosens but doesn’t let go completely. Metal fingers ghost his skin dragging down just feeling.

Tony tries to ignore the way it makes his skin tingle or how his heart begins to beat just that little bit faster. He looks back into the still open part of the shoulder.

“There’s a knob on the inside. Set to dial back the sensors and pulses being sent to your nerves and head to decrease or increase sensitivity. They probably had it shut off during your healing and set up. Then just never turned it on for some reason. It’s possible that working out so much jostled everything. Turned the knob accidentally. But the cord wasn't connected and occasionally was bumping into other cords. Causing you to interpret the senses as pain.”

Bucky nods numbly his hand inching up Tony’s arm until he’s met with the rolled-up sleeve. Then it seems Bucky gets enamored with the fabric and the feel of it as he pinches and rubs his index and thumb against it.

“It feels strange.” Bucky starts. Bringing his flesh hand up to grasp at Tony’s other sleeve. “It doesn’t feel the same. Like-- it's sensitive but dull at the same time.”

Tony nods and begins working on setting the panels back in place. “Well, it’s never going to live up to a real arm. It’s all just sensory being interpreted by the electric sensors in panels. You won’t be able to feel textures that well, but as you probably already can tell, heat and cold will be easily felt.”

“Yeah.” Just as Tony snaps the last sensor in place Bucky lifts his arm so the metal fingers brush over his cheek. “Your face is warm.”

“Well, you’re getting pretty handsy, making me blush.” Tony laughs, setting his tools to the side on the table.

“Do you want me to stop?”

Tony’s eyes meet Bucky’s for what actually be the first time that day, strange, how in the blue this close he realizes they’ve got a mix of blue, green and grey. It’s nice.

“No. You’re fine.” He answers finally, and the hand resumes it’s paused movements and travels up Tony’s cheek past his eyes and forehead and fingers slot through his hair. Bucky gasps slightly and his eyes widened the tiniest bit. Strange how they seemed so focused yet oddly spaced out at the same time.

“This feel’s so…”

“Greasy? I probably should have washed my hair, I would have had I known this was going to be a part of today's activities.”

“No!” Bucky laughs, and Tony can feel it like an echo with both hands on him. “That’s not what I was going to say.” He cards his fingers through Tony’s hair again and smiles, something about it has Tony mirroring it back.  

“What were you going to say?”

“That it feels nice.”

“Oh.” Tony nods and suddenly finds himself very intrigued with a random spot on the wall just above Bucky ’s head. The weight of those icy blue eyes suddenly feeling like a heavy weight to bear.

“Can I kiss you?” The question comes out in a whisper and Bucky sounds almost breathless but this close it’s perfectly clear to hear, and just for a single second Tony feels like he can’t breathe. He’s not panicking though, it’s just, suddenly it feels like he’s got a lot of attention on him. Bucky and his questions.

His little applications for permission to touch and to keep touching, something about his voice and the way his lips form words makes Tony’s skin actually want to light up with the heat of a blush. Which is so strange because he never used to be the type to blush.

He accounts it to his long stretch without human contact. It’s left him weakened, and touch starved, and to have someone in front of him offering it up on a silver platter, it’s so hard to find the temptation to decline.  

“Yes.” his voice wavers slightly but it doesn’t seem to matter to either of them as they lean forward and kiss. Their closed mouths pressing against each other for a moment and Tony holds his breath. Tension knotting up in his shoulders with uncertainty and fear. Seconds pass and nothing happens, they just sit there, lips pressed against one another, and it seems maybe they’re both too scared to move. Tony almost wants to laugh, and the tension in his shoulders give away. This is fine, this is okay. He leaned forward a  bit more, inhaling Bucky as he melted into the man. Once again the scent of coconut hitting his nose, it’s nice.

Bucky parts his lips just the slightest bit and stands to get a better angle standing over Tony as opposed to the small height difference with Tony on the stool and him on the chair. They stay connected the entire movement, Tony’s head following and angling up. Their one kiss breaks apart only to reconvene milliseconds later. Two kisses become three, three becomes four and soon Tony’s losing track of how many times they break apart less than an inch just to come back together.

Kisses meld into kitten licks of Bucky asking permission inside of Tony’s mouth, and without a word, Tony gives it parting his own lips. Bucky’s hands drop down to hang around Tony’s waist and a loose hug, as he pulls them impossibly closer. Tony gasps quietly as their legs slot between each other and he can feel Bucky’s very warm and hard erection pressed against his thigh. Somehow that ends up being the thing that makes him feel not okay anymore. So he pulls back, only for Bucky’s lips to follow him. It forces him to lean back further and turn his head.

“No, let’s stop.” he says in a rush of words, and steps off the stool and he keeps his eyes on the ground. Just for a moment he’s scared to look at Bucky, worried he may see Killian in his place.  

“Are you okay?” Bucky asks, his voice is a bit rougher than usual

“Yeah.” The answer comes out sharper than Tony meant, he’s trying so hard to keep it together he didn’t think to tone down the force of the word before he said it. Now it’s too late, and he’s trying to buy himself time, busying himself with his tools on his desk, lining them up just to pull them apart and do it again until he can feel the weakness in his knees fade and his head to clear. It doesn’t help to have Bucky behind him so silent, despite his warm looming presence speaks loudly.

Bucky knows somethings wrong, something changed, he just doesn’t know what, and he’s not sure how to approach it. So he stands, watching and waiting for Tony to do something, to say something. Yell or complain, to kick him out or to turn back around and kiss him again. Bucky doesn’t even care which Tony does, so long as he does _something_. Buck can’t stand the silence, he can’t stand nothing.

“Do you- not like touching?” He asks it’s the only thing that makes sense. Some people aren’t interested in sex, they don’t like to be touched. Tony was giving off that vibe.

Pinching the bridge of his nose, Tony sighs and gives up on rearranging the pens. “No- I mean, yes? I used to.” He settles “I still do sometimes. I will again, eventually, I think.” More like he hopes, but he doesn’t want to say it, doesn’t want to show how much of that small hope he’s lost over time. He spent so long not even thinking about it, for months it wasn’t something he had to be concerned about, alone here in his safety net. Now it was slowly being pulled away from him, and so many things he didn’t have to think about before he does now. Touching, kissing, dating, Soulmates.

God, he never wanted soulmates, that was never an option.

But now he has to deal with it all because not doing anything doesn’t seem right, he couldn’t just hide from it like he did everything else. He’d already tried that and they followed him home. It almost made him laugh to think about it.

Maybe this will follow him no matter where he hides. It makes him wonder what else will follow him.

“That’s okay. Then I’ll wait.” Bucky says, and Tony can’t stop himself from turning around to face the man.

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why _wait_.”

“As opposed to?”

“Not waiting.” Tony shrugs. “Finding someone else.”

“Someone else?” Bucky manages to make a face that is baffled and somehow oddly amused. “You what? Expect me to just drop my soulmate because you’re not ready for kissing? I’m not an impatient sex-centered asshole. I can wait.”

“How long?” Tony asks. “Six months? A year? Two years? What if it’s never.”

“Then it’s forever.” He says it like it’s so simple. Like he’s not giving up something he clearly wants. Tony can see it in his eyes, in his actions, his breathless asks for permission. Hell, he’s felt Bucky’s want pressed up against his thigh only moments ago. The holding himself back just enough not to take without consent. But he wants it. Tony knows what that looks like, he’s seen it on himself and on Pepper. That restraint of that pure need to feel skin on skin, to touch and to hold someone. It drove him mad, the dancing he and Pepper did around each other.

To do that to Bucky- to Steve when they so clearly wanted it, and there was nothing holding them back but Tony. He didn’t want that. He didn’t want to be the thing that stops and ruins everything. They would grow to resent him for it.

“You can’t just say that it’s not that easy.”

“I’ve waited for you this long, I can wait longer, and I can handle it being never.” Bucky shrugs.

“What do you mean waited this long… have you never-”

“I have.” Bucky stops him before he finishes the question. “A few times, but that was nothing, that was just relief. It was just to pass the time until I met you.”

“No.” Tony shakes his head. “No, don’t say you were waiting for me. You weren’t waiting for _me._ You didn’t know anything about me.”

“You’re my soulmate.”

“And? We’ve met and we still don’t know each other really.”

“Yeah.” Bucky nods. “But I want to change that. I’ve seen enough soulmate matches to know how this works. We’re perfectly matched for each other. How could I not wait for that?”

Tony felt like he was going to pull his hair out. “I mean—you can’t base it off other people experiences. I could be an asshole. In fact, I am an asshole sometimes. What if- what if I made a big deal about your scars today?” He gestures to Bucky’s arm. “Or was scared of your arm? What would you do?”

“I don’t know.” Bucky shrugs. “What could I do?”

“Leave, find someone else, someone better.”

“I don’t want someone else.”

“How can you say that? How can you know that? Have you even _tried_ dating?”

“Define try. It’s hard to open yourself up for a relationship when you know it can only be temporary. Either they will find their soulmate and leave, or you’ll realize you aren’t perfect for each other. That you’re settling.”

“How is it settling? You are cutting yourself off for a dream! There are lots of people who can get over scars, and that arm isn’t as big as a deterrent as you think it is.”  

“I’m not cutting myself off. I’ve seen how these things go, over and over. Steve- _he's_ tried dating. I’ve had to watch those relationships fall apart for a number of reasons. But why put myself through that when I knew you were out there?”

Tony finds himself speechless for a moment. Shocked at the idea of never trying anything else. Never trying to find love instead of letting one mark on your skin determine who you stay with forever. To say it’s a waste of time hurts Tony inside. His mind thinking back to Pepper. He never felt like he was settling with her. Those feelings were real and intense. They still are sometimes. But he hasn’t been interested in dating for a while not with everything that happened with Killian.

“It just sounds weird to commit to someone you’ve never seen or met.”

“Maybe, but I don’t regret waiting, or having to wait longer for the other things.”

“You will.” Tony whispers. “You’ll regret everything you gave up to wait, and you’ll regret finding me.” The words spill out of Tony like a flood that he can’t control, not that he feels he should, it’s true. He knows it’s true. He’s too damaged, too broken, too many things going around in his brain, too much past to pack away and move on from. He’s not stable, he’s not happy, he’s not even free. Not of his demons, not of Killian, not of himself.


	9. Chapter 9

Tony isn’t sure how he ended up on the floor, or with the killer headache that pounds in the back of his head. It’s all a muted pain, body feeling too heavy to move. Dimly aware of Jarvis speaking, he slowly comes to. Struggling to hear what the AI is saying he groans out an unintelligible response, and soon loses interest in trying and gives up, deciding going back into unconsciousness is easier. 

A warm hand gently caressing his cheek interrupts that plan. Followed with the sound of his name once again, finally, he willed himself to open his eyes, slowly his sight steadied, blurry at first. The image of Steve leaning over him, concern written in his eyes. Just for a moment, Tony thought Steve looked like an angel. 

“Tony? Are you okay? Tony look at me!” Questions came at a rapid-fire, and he couldn’t keep track of them as they flooded into his ears. When it becomes clear that he’s not looking up at an angel in the peaceful afterlife, the pain starts to filter into his awareness. Intense bursts in his head causing flashes in his vision. 

“Tony?” Steve asks again. “What happened?”

“‘M fine.” Tony grunts out, tongue feeling heavy in his mouth, he doesn’t trust his words not to slur. The ground uncomfortable beneath him, he tries pushing himself up. Only to fail, finding his arms have no strength or coordination. Steve’s hands catch him before he brains himself on the floor, then goes a step further and helps him sit all the way up. Hand staying on his back to keep him steady. 

They’re so close like this. Close enough that Steve’s breath ghosts the shell of Tony’s ear, and Tony can smell him. There was more than one smell, light layers of different scents piled one on top of the other. First was vinegar, and salt, like pickles. Then something softer, like fruit. It was faint, and smooth, probably fabric softener. Then something else, the hardest to detect, and one without name, but memorable. 

He realizes he’s spending too much time smelling Steve for it to not be weird, forcing himself to focus he realizes he, in turn, is being sniffed out, in a much more obvious way.

“Tony- are you drunk?” Steve asks, face pinching in disgust. 

Oh. Yeah. That sounds about right to Tony. Explains the taste in his mouth, and is compatible with the whole too uncoordinated to move thing. He might remember the first what… two drinks? After that everything is a blank. 

“Maybe.” He sniffs, bringing a hand up sloppy with pinched fingers. “A little? Or I was? Wha’ time issit?”

“Half past ten.” Steve says, digging for his phone in his pocket to confirm the time with his free hand.

It’s been a few hours in that case. Good. “I juss need some wa’er.”

“That's a good idea. Can you stand?” 

The answer to that is a definite no. Keeping his eyes open is a struggle enough, he didn’t even have the strength to get himself upright, walking is a no go, Tony says as much with a shake of his head. 

“Is it okay if I carry you?”

The offer took Tony by surprise. Despite it being the next obvious step to Tony not being able to walk himself, it still gave him pause. The only other options were Tony army crawling over or just going back to sleep right there on the floor, which he’s done before. It's not so bad. But Steve offering to carry Tony seemed like a stretch, something unexpected. Especially with the way Steve seemed to back away from any physical contact. Tony had assumed Steve just didn’t like it. 

“Do you wanna?” Tony asked, eyes squinted in disbelief. 

“I-” Steve looked unsure. “Yeah. I mean, you don’t have other options.”

“I could stay, ‘m fine.” 

Steve shook his head. “I’m not going to leave you on the floor in your hallway.”

“If you’re sure.”

Steve responded by carefully sliding a hand under Tony’s legs and one around his back and lifted him with an ease that startled Tony. He knew he lost a lot of weight and he wasn’t all the heavy, to begin with, but knowing and experiencing are two different things. It was also dizzying, not having his balance or his wits fully about him. He held Steve tightly fearful of losing his balance despite the clear show of strength and control on Steve’s part. 

“Kitchen or couch?”

“Couch.” Tony decided after a momentary debate, remembering the counters were messed up and he’s not quite sure he could hold himself up on the stool. 

Less than a minute later Steve was setting Tony down on the couch and leaving him with promises to be right back, producing a cup of water. Tony drank it like a man dying of thirst only to have Steve reprimand him and tell him not to drink it too fast. 

The water helped his dry throat but did nothing to clear the dizziness or the aches and pains that Tony was more and more becoming aware of.

“Oh, this is going to be so horrible in the morning.” He groans, setting the cup on the floor, and laying back on the couch. Steve smiles softly and sits on the edge.

“As it usually does when drinking to excess.” He reaches out to touch Tony before stopping himself suddenly as if thinking better of it and pulls it away instead. “You didn't hit your head or anything did you?”

“I dunno.” Tony sighs, running a hand over his head tiredly, feeling out for obvious cuts or bumps. Nothing. So he figured it was a win, if he did there’d be a bruise tomorrow, so it's another day’s problem. He relaxes into the couch thinking about sleep, and how much he really, really wants to go to bed for the first time in weeks. “I’m tired.” He huffs out a breath of air. 

“How about we get you to bed and set you up with a bucket and I check on you in the morning?”

Tony’s eyes are already closed but he finds the strength to nod. The feeling of Steve’s hands scooping him up isn’t as surprising this time now that he knows what to expect, it’s easier to melt into Steve’s arms and relax. 

He feels safe and warm.

When Steve sets him down on the bed,  lifting the blanket and setting it over Tony whispering a goodnight, and when he turns to leave, Tony reaches out grabbing his arm and quietly, like a secret, he asks Steve to stay. That's the last things he remembers before he drifts off into sleep.

__

 

It’s cold. Snow falls in gigantic puffs from the sky, everything is covered in the white fluffy layer. It was beautiful. Tony stood in the field looking up at the endlessly white sky. Air blowing out of his mouth visible in the cold. His skin freezing. He forgot to put on his coat before coming out. Yet, his hands aren’t cold, in fact, they feel warm. He looks down at them, and the breath catches in his throat.

Hands covered in blood, and the snow on the ground around him stained with it. A long dribbled trail of blood, he follows it with his eyes until it’s too far a distance to see and he stumbles through the snow towards it. The closer he gets to the unknown source the more frantic he grows, and the higher the snow piles on the ground to the point he’s practically swimming in it, freezing from the inside out.

His teeth chatter together as he shivers violently, gasping as he’s going as fast as he can. Until he takes a step and the ground never meets his foot. 

He’s falling, sinking into the red bloodied snow. 

When he finally hits the ground everything fluffy, bright and beautiful is gone. Nothing but darkness and ice layer the world, still covered in blood, now drying and brown, light flashes, a blinker, yellow. On and off, over and over, with an errie click. He looks up, a car crashed. 

He knows this road, he knows that car, he knows this day.

Picking himself off the ground he runs for the car. His path is soon blocked by a blur and painful force directly to his chest. He yells out as the burning pain and sting sets in.

“Shh, Tony, it’s all going to be okay, I’ve got you.” Killian's voice floods his ears. Everything changes. No longer outside with the car crash, but not where he expected to be either. Instead, it’s his apartment, back pressed into the wall, and Killian's hand is _inside_ Tony’s chest. It takes a few looks, and several seconds to fully process that bit of information. He looks down at it. The only thing visible is Killian’s bloody forearm the rest is inside of Tony, poking at his ribs and lungs, organs pushed around roughly. 

“Stay still for me Tony, you must be tired.” Killian leaned forward and whispered in his ear. “I’ll make it good for you.” Tony pushed at Killian, he tried to back away, free himself from the pain and torture, but there was nowhere to go, Killian wouldn’t move an inch, he was too strong, and Tony too weak. His body wouldn’t listen to him. 

He was trapped, forced to endure. 

He began to taste the blood in his mouth and the fear caused him to hyperventilate. 

“I can feel your heart, Tony.” Killian said, his pupils blown wide, lips parted as if this was something else, not pain, not murder, but love, and passion. “It’s beating so strongly.” A constriction tight around Tony’s heart made him full body stutter, his lungs seized, struggling for air, and pain wracked through him. “I should take this, right? We both know this belongs to me by now.” 

Tony screamed as his heart was torn from his chest.

“Tony! Tony wake up!” 

The dream started to fade and mold into something else, Tony still struggled, fought to free himself from pain and death. Fought to free himself from Killian. He felt his fist hit flesh and he went for as much damage as he could, digging his fingers in.  If he hurt Killian enough it’d buy him more time to get away.

He felt the skin give under his short nails, he was quick and warm blood grazed his fingertips, a short pained yell reached his ears then his wrists were snatched with a force that didn’t seem human. He was yelling out now. It happened quickly. Lasted for a second, maybe two. His skin tightened and pinched under the pressure, then the bones inside his wrist began to give and snap. Just as the pain burned hot and radiated, the pressure released and his wrist freed. 

However, the pain remained. 

With pain, came realization and freedom. Because here, in his wrist right now was real pain. It ached, ebbed and burned. Forced tears to his eyes and a yell from his throat. It’s so much more real than that hazy imitation and memory of pain. 

The horrid image of Killian stealing his heart gone snatched away by the unforgiving force of pain. In its place was Steve, looking down at him from the side of the bed, a horrified expression on his face. A thick droplet of blood running down his cheek from a fresh set of cuts that Tony immediately know’s is his own work.

He hadn’t been fighting off Killian, he’d been fighting Steve, he’d hurt Steve.

“O-oh god.” Tony’s throat sore, and voice hoarse from strained vocal cords, he must have been screaming. “I- 'm so sor- gah!” He’s cut off pain shoots up his arm, as he moves his hand foolishly already forgotten about his wrist.

He clutches the injured arm gently to his chest, using his free hand to help himself upright and to the other side of the bed, away from Steve. 

“Tony, I- I didn’t mean to-” It’s an apology, which doesn’t make sense in Tony’s mind. _He’s_ the one who should be apologizing. He’s the one who nearly tore Steve’s eye out, just an inch higher and it would be a lot more than a scratch. Besides. Making sense of it doesn’t matter much at the moment. Tony feels sick to his stomach, his heart racing in his chest, mind clouded and dizzy. 

He can’t shake the fear from the dream despite knowing already it was all fake. 

Well, some of it was fake. At this point, most of it was just reliving history. Torturous memories back to haunt him. His mind finding new and creative ways to make him experience it all over again. 

He sways on his feet one he stands and he notices the edges of his vision is blurry. It doesn’t matter, he doesn’t need to see. He knows how to get where he wants to go, without sight. In fact, he’d prefer not to see everything around him. Prefer not to pass the spot in the hall where he dreamt Killian had him all over again. Prefer not to see the damage he’s done to Steve, and the way blood drips from his face and he lifts a hand to wipe it away, despite his eyes never leaving Tony. The creases in his brow from fear and concern never smoothing. 

He hates the way Steve’s looking at him. He hates that it’s not anger, and he hates that some part of him is relieved it isn’t. He hates how he can’t decide what he wants, other than the fact that he knows he needs to be out of this room, he needs to be alone, he needs to breathe.

“No, please don’t.” Tony shakes his head, cutting Steve’s apology off. “I just- I need to-” He points out the hall, and leaves, hoping the action speaks for itself, because words are failing him at the moment.

_

The first thing he does when he gets to the bathroom after shutting and locking his door is to pull down the collar of his shirt roughly and look at his chest. A breath of relief escaping his lips, no open wound, no blood. Everything as it should be.

His entire body deflates, he steps back to the wall, and slides down to the floor heavily, taking long deep ragged breaths and waits for the room to stop spinning. His injured arm hovered above his lap, not allowing it to bump into anything, he’s constantly wincing at the tiniest of movements that cause it to ache more in pain. 

He takes a moment to finally look it over and grimaces at the sight. It's bent unnaturally, bone out of place and causing a raised bump the skin the whole area is already swelling something fierce, and his heart races, even more, thinking about how the hell he’s supposed to deal with this. It’s not a cut that he can just bandage and ignore. This is serious, he can’t even move his fingers without pain.

How is he supposed to work? Cook? Do anything he needs until he gets it looked at?

He sighs, shaking his head, letting the wrist rest gently on his leg, as he takes stock of himself. A headache, he’s thirsty, feels weak and tired, yet too awake to fall asleep. All normal feelings after he’s had a bad dream. It feels a little worse than usual. But that's his own fault as well as everything else that seems to be happening today. 

He shouldn’t have drank, he knows better. It was stupid and risky. He can’t handle alcohol as well as he used to, he’s lost so much weight, and it’s been so long since he last had any.

Anything could have happened when he was drunk. He could have called Pepper, accidentally told her where he was. Or he could have hurt himself. If Steve hadn’t come by, and he really hit his head on the ground, Jarvis probably would have called an ambulance, then he’d end up right back in Killian's world. He chuckled to himself a bit hysterically. After all, he deserved that horrible dream. It was his own sick reminder of what could be if he slipped up. One mistake and Killian would have him, and he’d never let Tony go a second time. 

He looked down at his wrist, dark red swelling slowly getting darker and darker, turning a different shade. Maybe he already slipped, maybe this was all over. Tears built up in his eyes, and his breaths turned short and quick in defeated sobs. He would have to see a doctor, and then it’d all be over. It’s too late, there are no workarounds, no ignoring this kind of injury. Everything he’s done in the last six months to protect himself -over, just like this.

“Tony?” Steve’s voice comes through the door. It’s small and apologetic. “Are you okay? Is your arm-- is it okay?” 

His arm is most definitely not okay, Tony is in no way shape or form okay, and he hasn’t been in a long time. So he doesn't answer that. “Is your eye okay?” He counters instead. He can hear shuffling, maybe Steve leaned against the door.

“It’s fine, _I’m_ fine.” He paused. “Tony, it’s you I’m worried about… your arm- I could feel it- can you please come out, so I can see you? Make sure you’re okay?” 

Tony turns his face to press against the cool of the tile wall, helping with his headache. “I can’t.” He whispers. The idea of getting up, of leaving the bathroom. Facing the world, knowing he’d have to see a doctor… he couldn’t. Instead, he wanted to stay here and never leave.

There was a shuffling outside the door and a soft sigh. 

“Then I’ll wait right here until you are.”

Despite himself, Tony smiled.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I uhhh thought I uploaded this a week ago... I have zero idea what happened with that. I don't know if I tried and it didn't go through for some reason or once completing the chapter it completely slipped my mind. But um, sorry, and here ya go!

Bucky woke up slowly, the increasing ache in his head and thirst pulling his body into a too uncomfortable state to sustain sleep. Groggily, he walked to the kitchen, eyes squinted, angry at the light that poured through the windows. One there he downs half a glass of water in one go, takes a breath, then downs the rest of it. Setting the glass down on the counter, he suddenly becomes aware of Steve’s absence. Walking down the hall to Steve’s room. His clothes from yesterday are thrown haphazardly onto his hamper, but his shoes and keys are gone. He goes back to his room, grabbing his phone ready to call Steve when he notices he’s got a message from him, sent late last night, saying he’s spending the night at Tony’s.

_ Um, What? _

He hits call, and brings the phone to his ear, feeling his heart race a bit more, not sure how to feel, definitely confused at the turn of events. He doesn’t even remember Steve leaving the apartment much less going to Tony’s place. What the hell was going on?

The phone rang four times before Steve answered. 

“Hello?”

“You stayed at Tony’s?”

“Yeah, I texted you.” His voice was quiet, Bucky realized, and strained, weary almost. 

“Something wrong? What’s going on?”

Steve hesitated, and Bucky could hear him breathe deeply into the receiver. “Bucky I- I hurt him.” he whispered like it pained him to say the words. 

“What do you mean you hurt him? What happened?”

“I came to check on him last night because he wasn’t answering his phone, and when I got here he was drunk, and I stayed the night to watch over him. He started having a nightmare and I went to wake him up and- and I grabbed his wrist too hard I think. It might be broken, I don’t know, he locked himself in the bathroom, and won't let me see it. I don’t know what to do.” 

“Okay, wait for me before you do anything. I’m coming over.”

“Bucky I don’t think-”

“I don’t care, I’m coming over.” Bucky hung up the phone and quickly dressed.

_ 

Steve looked down at his phone, the screen flashing red before closing out to the lock screen. He blinked, putting it in his pocket, and looking to the cracked open apartment door, he’d left to answer the phone, but now he hesitated about going back in. Tony might not want to see him. It felt clear with the way he locked himself in the bathroom. But Steve couldn’t leave, not when he was sure Tony was hurt in some way, he’d felt it, the cracking, small but many all over the wrist, all within the same few seconds. Unless Tony directly asked him to, Steve would stay. With a deep breath, he headed back into the apartment taking his seat next to the bathroom door and resting his head on the wall.

“So Bucky’s coming over.” 

Tony let out a dry laugh, it was quiet through the barrier of the door, but Steve could hear it clearly, and the way it echoed off the tiled walls and floor. “Why, did he want a front row seats to my meltdown?” It was the first time they’d spoken in a while. Steve wanted to coax Tony out of the bathroom but was at a loss for words of how. So he sat and waited.

“I tried to say maybe he shouldn’t but he doesn’t seem in the mood to listen.” 

“It doesn’t matter.” Tony shifted, back moving against the door, and Steve could feel the vibrations of it in the wall. He looked to it, feeling so close but far away. Wishing he could reach out and touch Tony. 

No.

He wouldn’t touch Tony, that's what got him into this mess.

Still, he felt himself craving, wanting to at least lay eyes on Tony.  

What hurt the worst was Steve could get through the door, he was strong enough, I would take little to no effort, and then he’d be able to check on Tony, get rid of this wall between them. But that wouldn’t do him any good, in fact, it’d only probably serve to scare Tony more than he already had, and then there would be two things in this apartment that he had broken.

“This was all a mistake anyway.”

Steve’s heart sunk into his stomach. “What was?”

Tony laughed again more hysterical this time. “Allowing myself to believe, even for a moment, that this could work. That I could have soulmates and not -- not be me.” 

“Tony this isn’t your fault.”

“Yes, it is! It’s _always_ my fault. I ruin everything, it’s practically my brand.” Tony had to take deep steadying breaths to prevent himself from getting worked up again, the tears on his face only just barely dried, he doesn’t want them coming back again. His eyes are sore enough. “This is what I tried to tell Bucky yesterday. This is never going to work out. I can’t have soulmates. I’m too much of a mess for a relationship, any relationship, much less one where you and Bucky have been _waiting_ for me… it’s too much pressure.”

Steve wished they weren’t having this conversation through the door, not when his focus was split, and a part of him wants to wait until Bucky gets here. He didn’t want to do this alone, but he’s afraid Bucky will take too long.

“I understand how any relationship can give you a kind of pressure. But soulmates aren’t supposed to give you more of it. In fact, It’s supposed to make everything easier. Soulmates are people who fit together, they’re meant for each other, and the waiting- it’s not like our lives were on pause, we didn’t save our first kisses or our first times for you, we just-”

“Nothing’s ever easy with me. You're expecting this to be better than other relationships, and it's not going to live up to what you want it to be. I can’t be this perfect soulmate you guys want.”

“Tony, being perfect for someone, and just being perfect is not the same thing.  We’re not meant to be without baggage or to not have flaws. Some of us have sharp edges and scars. Being perfect for each other isn’t coming free of that, it’s just fitting in a way that you have someone to help carry the baggage.”

“I’ve just got too much.” Tony whispered.

“Maybe that's why you have two soulmates.”

“Maybe.” Tony nods, despite Steve not being able to see it. “But you’re going to get tired of it eventually. Both of you. There’s so much, and it’s so complicated. You’re going to find yourself wishing you had someone who wasn’t so damaged.” 

“Tony, I don’t know what it is that you have that scares you so much. I don’t know why you seem to think there’s nothing for you to do but mess this up. But I want you to know, you aren’t the only one who is afraid of that. I have baggage, Bucky has baggage, you’ve seen it with your own eyes. All I am saying is that maybe don’t give up just yet? Please. Not because of that at least. Don’t feel alone, or like a burden, because you’re not, I swear.”

“We’re barely into this bond, and I’m already messing things up, It’s only going to keep happening.”

“Well, today was my mess up. Are you tired of me?”

“This wasn’t your fault, I have nightmares all the time. You were only reacting to me fighting you.”

Steve shakes his head. “It’s not your fault that you have nightmares, or for how you react to them, that's not something you can control. Besides I knew better. I’m really strong, Tony. I do this a lot, break things. I’ve done something like this before, on accident, with a girl I liked.”

That piqued Tony’s interest. “What happened?”

“I was holding her hand and... stopped paying attention, and usually when that happens, things tend to break. I broke her wrist.”

Tony looks down at his own wrist. The swelling made it look like he had a knot under his skin, and the color of it was going from red to a dark purple. It throbbed and ached in time with his heartbeat, radiating an uncomfortable amount of warmth. 

Steve had done this before? There’s no way someone can do that kind of force on accident like that- not twice… could they? Just now it was a bad angle, Steve was over him, Tony was fighting him, it’s not extremely hard to hurt a wrist, and Steve is built, he probably is very strong, but- just from holding a hand?  He was tempted to ask Jarvis, double check the facts. Some part of him felt like Steve was lying, trying to make Tony feel better. Everyone always tried to minimize his faults or examine them under a fine lens and bring them to light for the world to see. He didn’t want that, he didn’t want pretending, and obligational love. He wanted the truth, he wanted something genuine. 

But another part of him felt something else. Something he’d forgotten about completely until just now.

Jarvis said that Bucky wasn’t the one who punched the counter. 

Tony inhaled, pushing himself up using his uninjured hand, and unlocking the bathroom door. Steve looked up eyes wide, and hopeful, quickly standing himself, bewildered when Tony walked right past him without word and headed for the kitchen, pulling open the oven, taking out the mold he’d set in there earlier and forgotten all about. Tony set it on the counter, eyeing it carefully, before looking to Steve who had hesitantly followed behind. 

“It’s your hand, isn’t it? You punched the counter.” Steve’s eyes locked on the clay mold and realized Tony had figured it out. He was at a loss for words. It was all coming out. Tony took the silence as the confirmation he didn’t need and continued. “I don’t get it- how? It’s a marble countertop. _Real_ marble, almost three inches thick.” Tony walked around the counter to Steve, “Let me see your hand.” 

“Let me see yours first.” Steve finally found the words, his heart racing in his chest, fear and other emotions he couldn’t name going through him, but he still needed to see what he’d done- needed to make sure Tony was okay.

The hand was clutched to Tony’s chest, halfway to keep most of the swelling out of sight, and also to prevent him from jostling it too much and causing more pain than it already is. 

“Same time?”

“Okay.”

The sharp breath Steve pulled in when he saw the state of Tony’s wrist was enough to make anyone think it was actually Steve who had been hurt. “Oh Tony, this is really bad.” 

Tony ignores him, looking over the hand Steve offered, the opposite of bad, not a single scratch, mark or bruise. Despite it having been an entire week since it happened, there should be some sign there. Although when he thinks back to it, Steve didn’t look to be in pain, or hiding his hand when it happened. It was so easy for Bucky to take the blame. No other proof than Jarvis sensors seeing what happened, and a mold that doesn’t fit the look of the metal arm Bucky possesses. 

“What are you on? Steroids? How did you do this? It can’t be normal bodybuilder stuff.” 

“It’s not normal.” Steve shrugs, moving his hand to gently cradle Tony’s arm, turning it slightly to get a better look while he spoke. “When I was younger I went through an experimental drug trial, ever since I’ve been strong. Strong enough to break wrists without thinking. Strong enough to smash marble counters when I get angry.” Steve chuckles bitterly. “I don’t even have to be angry. I just have a hard time keeping myself in check.”

Tony winced as Steve gently ran a finger over the darkest part of the swelling, as time passes and with better lighting, he can make out the impression of  Steve’s hand, where it crushed his wrist. The bruise and swelling outlining it. 

“I’m sorry, so your flaw and ‘baggage’ is that you have super strength? How is this a bad thing?”

“I just said I can’t control it. Look at yourself, Tony. Look at what I did.” He looks down at Tony’s wrist before letting it go. “I break everything I touch.” 

They locked eyes, Tony struggling to find the words to say and Steve feeling like he’s made his point, doesn't feel the need.  Silence hangs between them, and a knock on the apartment door is what pushes them out of it. 

Tony flinches. “Who-”

“Bucky, remember? I said he was coming.”

“Oh.” Tony nods. He had actually forgotten about that. Tony tells Jarvis to unlock the door. But he's careful to say for Bucky. His own paranoia setting back in as the adrenaline dies down within him. He feels ragged and beaten. Hungry and parched. A vague sense of nausea makes him wonder why he didn't throw up during all the excitement and commotion. 

The door pushes open seconds after the click of it unlocking. Bucky announces himself, calling for Steve beginning to ask if Tony was okay but stopped himself short when he came down the hall and saw them. 

“Oh.” His eyes darted between the two of them. They were standing close. Not enough for someone to assume they were in the midst of something physical. But there was a look in their eyes. A feeling in the air. Something happened. Something changed, in feelings, dynamic, or even just a mental block lifted from between the two. They'd shared something, and Bucky didn't know what. But he did know it made him feel something hot and unpleasant in the pit if his stomach. “What's going on?” 

“Nothing.” Tony shakes his head. Slowly dropping his arm and slightly trying to hide it behind his hip. Steve watches the moment. 

“Steve said you were hurt on the phone.”

“It’s nothing, probably a sprain.”

“It looks way worse than a sprain, and even if it was just that you should still get it checked.” Steve counters. 

“Let me see.” Bucky said, stepping into the kitchen. But Tony shakes his head stepping back,  refusing to bring his hand out from behind.

“No, it's fine. Honestly.” Everything he says is overridden when he backs up into the refrigerator and winces with a pained hiss. It’s clear they don’t intend to give up from the pinched looks on their faces. “I won’t go to the hospital.” He lifts his head, trying to seem taller than he was, more confident. But this wasn’t a bluff, one word and Jarvis would have this whole place on lockdown, no one gets in, no one gets out. “You can’t make me.”

“What are you so scared of? It’s just the hospital, come on, you’re obviously in pain.”

Tony squeezes his eyes shut trying to think of something, anything, an excuse out of this. “I don’t like doctors or hospitals. It’s very bad. I spazz out, it’s no good for everyone involved.”

“I’m sure that we can find a doctor that can accommodate you for that. They deal with people who hate going to the doctors, and needles and blood all the time. Some of them are specifically trained to help troubled patients.”

Tony scoffs. “Well, I don’t want that.”  

“You don’t want to get better?” Bucky asked eyebrow raised. 

“I do, I just-” He cuts himself off with a breath. “I _can’t_ go. I don’t have a fear of doctors I-” Tony doesn’t want to explain how it’s just the one. “There’s someone looking for me. If I go, they’ll find me.”  

“Who’s looking for you?” 

“Is it the police?”

“No.” Tony scoffed, he hasn’t had trouble with the law since he was a teenager. Although he’s not convinced Killian wouldn’t put a missing persons out on him if he hadn’t been in contact with Pepper and Rhody occasionally. “It doesn’t matter who it is. I just can’t because I- I can’t let them find me okay?”

“You’re just going to sit here with a possibly broken wrist and not do anything about it?”

“I’ll be fine, I’ll just take some aspirin, and ice it.”

“It’s going to take more than ice, I felt your bones cracking.”

“Just let me see it, please?” Bucky asks one last time. 

Tony gave in, hopping up on the counter and moving his arm from behind himself, allowing Bucky to look it over. He steps forward and gently cradles the arm, by the elbow, careful not to touch near the wrist or the hand. Tony looks at the pinched expression growing on his face instead of the wrist, not wanting to look at it himself. “I’d rather live with this then go back.” He whispered. 

Bucky’s eyes lifted and met his. Reading something, Tony felt as if he could see right through him as if his skin were made of glass.  

“There’s gotta be something we can do.” Bucky sighs, trying to think through their options before getting an idea. “What if instead of going there, we bring a doctor here.” 

“I don’t know.” The idea of someone else coming here made Tony shiver. It was hard enough having Steve and Bucky here, and that wasn’t even really his choice, not at first. Even if they were to do this, there was a chance this is the opposite of what Tony wanted to prevent here. At least if he went to a doctor, they would just know he was there, they wouldn’t need his address, or he’d just not give it. But to come here. They’d know where he lived. He doesn’t want anyone to know that. He has no doubt it would get back to Killian. “I don’t want them here.” 

“Come back to our apartment, and we’ll do it from there.” 

“Okay wait,” Steve steps forward. “How are we just going to get a doctor to our apartment? Call one up? It’s not like we can call an ambulance, this isn’t an emergency, and even if it was they’d just take him to the hospital. Then there’s the fact that if he needs scans or anything he’d end up having to go. There’s a reason we can’t fix this ourselves. We don’t have the equipment.”

Bucky nodded. “He has a point.” 

“It doesn’t matter.” Tony shook his head, cradling the wrist to his chest. “I can’t go, I’m not going.” 

“What about Bruce?” Steve offers after a short breath, Bucky turns to him. 

“What about him?”

“He went to med school.” 

“Yeah, but he dropped out after a few years, and having him doesn't fix any of our other problems.”

“True, but he could at least tell us if it looks serious. So we can know what we’re working with. For all, we know Tony’s right, and time will heal it all on its own.”

“I guess it's  better than sitting here and debating it all night.” They both turn to Tony. “What do you say? Our place then call Bruce?”

Tony doesn’t see himself having many other options at the moment. So he shrugged. “I guess.”  


End file.
